From science to arts: Beauty and simplicity in science

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From science to artsBeauty and simplicity in
science

• Darko Polšek
• dpolsek_at_public.srce.hr
• IUC Dubrovnik
• May 2004.

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Henri Poincare

• "The scientist does not study nature because it
  is useful to do so. He studies it because he
  takes pleasure in it and he takes pleasure in it
  because it is beautiful. If nature were not
  beautiful, it would not be worth knowing..." Many
  physicists (Dirac, Einstein...) seem to hold a
  similar view, that there is a close connection
  between truth and beauty in natural science.

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Paul Davies

• In The Mind of God, Davis says "It is widely
  believed among scientists that beauty is a
  reliable guide to truth, and many advances in
  theoretical physics have been made by the
  theorist demanding mathematical elegance...where
  laboratory tests are difficult, these aesthetic
  criteria are considered even more important than
  experiment."

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Beauty as a driver of scientific appreciacion

• the work of science is both driven and sustained
  by an appreciation of beauty and a feeling of awe
  (e.g. Einstein, Dirac, Schrodinger).
• Analysis, emotion and sensibility are integral
  components of both the scientific and the
  artistic process.
• three levels of aesthetic experience - sensual,
  emotional/imaginative and analytical - are common
  to the experience and process of science and art.
  
• The same applies for such elements as the play of
  tension and relief, realization of expectations,
  and surprise upon the encounter of unexpected
  connections of meanings.
• These aesthetic elements can be found in a
  scientific discovery, just as they can be found
  in a good novel or a fine symphony.
• The understanding of an essential and deep
  affinity between (great) science and (great) art
  is supported by the claims of many scientists,
  who submit that an aesthetic drive underlies
  science

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Graham Fermelo It must be beautiful

• to get over what Einstein meant by saying that a
  grand mathematical theory and equations must be
  beautiful think of a crossword puzzle when
  youre filling it in bits of it make sense and
  it just doesnt quite work. Then you realise
  youve got one of the things wrong and then
  click, it falls into place and it works. When you
  do a rubic cube as well, youre messing about
  with it and all of a sudden click, it falls into
  place. Thats very much akin to the feeling that
  you get mathematically when an equation really
  works. Its that click feeling and thats the
  feeling Einstein certainly had when he put
  forward his gravity equation, and indeed his
  special theory of relativity too. And yes, that
  is the feeling we get these days when we play
  with his equation, when we try to find new
  beautiful equations.

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Quantum mechanics and aestethics

• Paul Dirac, the author of the quantum mechanic
  theory for the electron (which predicted the
  existence of antimatter), said "It is more
  important to have beauty in one's equations than
  to have them fit experiment."
• Bohr and Heisenbergs quantum theory engaged a
  comparison between physics and art. Bohr's view
  was influenced by the "symbolic turn" in that he
  rejected all mechanical models of the movement of
  electrons in the atom. He pronounced "the failure
  of all spatio-temporal models" and the need for
  recourse to symbolic analogies.
• After 1924 Bohr used the notion of symbolic
  representation regularly, by which he meant all
  elements of a physical theory with no correlate
  in intuition. A more sophisticated - i.e.
  symbolic - language was required.
• Heisenberg claimed that physical theories were
  like styles of art. He noted that the conceptual
  systems of physics (for instance, Newtonian and
  quantum) differ not only because their objects
  differ, but also because they create different
  groups of relations. As styles of art emerge
  through a set of formal rules so do symbolic
  idealizations underlying conceptual systems of
  physics. Contemporary science is changing the
  entire view of classical physics and modern
  philosophy, introducing (like a style of art) new
  presuppositions about the nature of reality.

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J. McAllister Beauty and revolution in science

• In assessing theories, scientists rely upon
  empirical criteria such as internal consistency,
  predictive accuracy and explanatory power.
• beside empirical matters, aesthetic concerns are
  also operative, which cannot be defined in terms
  of a fixed set of properties, since what is
  considered attractive or beautiful has been
  different at different times and in different
  disciplines.
• But in general, beauty in science (as in art) is
  identified via features which convey an
  impression of aptness - they are appropriate,
  fitting or seemly.
• aesthetic criteria are as central to the
  scientist's acceptance of a theory as are
  empirical considerations.
• theoretical innovations have aesthetic
  constraints.

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J. McAllister 2

• There is a distinction between empirical and
  aesthetic criteria, but the latter are not merely
  "extra-scientific", - they are an integral part
  of scientific development and change. The
  aesthetic canon is constructed by the aesthetic
  features of all past theories
• - an inductive mechanism which ensures that the
  aesthetic canon is conservative. What compels
  scientists to accept a new paradigm is that it is
  empirically better performing. Allegiance to the
  aesthetic canon must be suspended to accept a new
  theory.
• for some the rupture is too deep and they hang on
  to the established aesthetic paradigm - to the
  conservative aesthetic criteria. Ptolemaic
  Copernican system of heavenly motions.
• aesthetic factors are on the side of the
  conservative trend in the choice between
  theories, while empirical factors compel
  scientists toward innovation and radical breaks
  with established views

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Joseph Margolis Against Kuhn

• No useful instructions from Kuhn, since aestetic
  criteria vary with time
• Margolis argues that there is a common "reason"
  art and science share professional taste/reason
  in the sciences, as in the arts, is a function of
  historical practice.
• What is a "good" explanatory theory (or a
  painting) is what accords with practice. Reason
  is "an artifact of historical life" and the
  aesthetic is a convenient "catchall term for the
  informality with which the most formal criteria
  can be legitimated".
• Margolis posits consensual practices broadly
  grounding scientific praxis and aesthetic taste
  to some common practical reason governing both.
• There can be no meaningful distinction between
  "objective" and "subjective", but at the same
  time there is no principled difference between
  what counts as objectivity in the arts and the
  sciences.
• Margolis discerns that science does not "borrow"
  from the aesthetic, but rather the aesthetic is
  "essential to what we mean by objectivity in the
  sciences".

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Aestetic tinkering as a scientific process

• The role of models and metaphors
• Example Watson and Crick - double helix