Unmasking the Truth Beneath the Beauty: Why the Supposed Aesthetic Judgements Made in Science May Not Be Aesthetic at All

Abstract

In this article I examine the status of putative aesthetic judgements in science and mathematics. I argue that if the judgements at issue are taken to be genuinely aesthetic they can be divided into two types, positing either a disjunction or connection between aesthetic and epistemic criteria in theory/proof assessment. I show that both types of claim face serious difficulties in explaining the purported role of aesthetic judgements in these areas. I claim that the best current explanation of this role, McAllister's ‘aesthetic induction’ model, fails to demonstrate that the judgements at issue are genuinely aesthetic. I argue that, in light of these considerations, there are strong reasons for suspecting that many, and perhaps all, of the supposedly aesthetic claims are not genuinely aesthetic but are in fact ‘masked’ epistemic assessments.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Alix Cohen, Rachel Cooper, James McAllister, Alexander Paseau, and audiences at Lancaster University and University College Cork, where this work was presented in earlier versions, for their encouragement and help in clarifying my ideas.

Notes

[1] Although I am concerned with aesthetic judgements in both mathematics and science, for reasons of space I shall talk primarily of the physical sciences whose theories are typically expressed in mathematical formulas, rather than proofs in pure mathematics. Where differences are important I will make some remarks about the latter based on the conclusions reached regarding the former, but many of the conclusions and problems are, I shall suggest, common to both areas. On the relationship between mathematics and physical science see Engler (1990) and McAllister (1996, 59). There are also, of course, important differences between pure and applied mathematics to bear in mind, and perhaps also between the physical and biological sciences, though I shall have little to say about the latter. It should also be noted that I am concerned here only with aesthetic appraisals of theories and proofs as these seem to me to be the most problematic and most central cases. Thus I shall not be concerned with aesthetic judgements of phenomena viewed in light of some theory, nor with aesthetic appraisals of representations of theories or proofs. See Penrose (1974, 267); McAllister (1996, 24ff.); Gowers (2002, 35ff.).

[2] I remain neutral on the question of whether science aims or should aim at truth, and although for the sake of shorthand I shall speak of the relationship between beauty and ‘truth’, one can read for ‘truth’ epistemic or empirical adequacy.

[3] It is unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper to deal with these theories here.

[4] Another approach is offered by Zangwill, who argues for the sensory‐dependence of aesthetic properties based upon a formalist conception of such properties which disallows abstract entities like proofs and theories. There is no space here to discuss Zangwill's account in detail, but I think the sensory‐dependence thesis is unconvincing and positive arguments for it are in short supply. Zangwill himself defends it by focusing primarily on how apparently non‐sensory cases of aesthetic appreciation, such as those involved in the pictorial meaning of paintings, and the content of literature, can be made to conform to the thesis (Zangwill 2001, especially ch. 8). Whether the particular arguments he puts forward are successful or not, it is difficult to see how such a strategy could by itself possibly convince anyone who simply denied the sensory‐dependence thesis and saw no difficulty in holding that abstract entities could be aesthetically appreciated. See McAllister (1996, 28–29) for discussion of the problem of perceiving the properties of abstract entities.

[5] A dependence on certain conceptions of the aesthetic that are open to dispute weakens the force of Zangwill's otherwise often ingenious arguments for more or less the same conclusion that I uphold.

[6] For a fuller discussion of this issue see Zangwill (2001, 141–142). Zangwill's own position emerges out of his own developed theory of aesthetic formalism which, combined with the thesis of sensory‐dependence, leads him to posit that the application of aesthetic terms to abstract objects, such as theories, proofs, and chess moves must be metaphorical. The further appeal to purposes and function relies rather on the idea that aesthetic assessment is simply out of place in such areas due to the fact that there can be no disjunction between truth and beauty given the nature of the objects at issue.

[7] I think McAllister's account here is perfectly plausible but, for reasons I am about to discuss, there are serious suspicions that the properties at issue in such claims, and which he discusses, are not aesthetic, as he holds, but epistemic. Indeed, cases such as this, where theories are held to be true but not beautiful and vice versa, actually, I think, support these suspicions. See below, Section 3.

[8] See McAllister (1996) for a range of such evidence. For what it's worth, I think his explanation of such agreement and disagreement is plausible, despite the fact that the judgements at issue are not, as he thinks they are, genuinely aesthetic.

[9] And this claim is of course compatible with the trivial fact that art can have many purposes in addition to that of aesthetic interest; though it is perhaps less clear that these other purposes will pertain to an object qua work of art.

[10] It is also perhaps worth noting that I think many of the issues raised here mirror those which have been discussed in the debate concerning the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value. For an overview of the debate see Carroll (2000). For a sceptical view of the purported overlap (in certain cases) between aesthetic and ethical value see Todd (forthcoming).