Beauty in Science

Sammy Keane

 The comparing and contrasting of art and science is something we have been discussing since the first
day of Lia Halloran’s college course, “Art and Science”. Personally, I think that science can absolutely
be beautiful. It has been said that beauty is subjective to the eye of the viewer, however, the many
comparisons and examples between science and art lead me to believe that science has just as much
beauty as any art piece may have. When doing some research on my view of this topic I came across
two great articles with examples that interested me. One of the articles, written by Unimed, has to do
with the beauty of a human face, whereas, the other article, written by Forbes, discusses the beauty in
nature. Both articles, however, combine the notion of beauty and nature influencing science. 
In Unimed Living’s news article, “Science is Beauty”, Paul O’Hara starts by saying, “let’s delve a
little into what beauty is, what it means and what makes something beauty-full. We can use the human
face as an example – there have been many studies looking at people's perceptions of what makes
a beautiful face. When analysed we discover that 'beautiful faces' have all sorts of mathematical
and geometrical proportions, symmetries and relationships. In other words, when a face has certain
mathematical alignments between the different parts it is appealing to the eye.” Unimed then posed
the question, “ Could we say that the beauty of a human face could actually be defined
mathematically?” The images below are pictures of faces with the golden ratio. As you can see
these faces are all based on science and the use of mathematics to see the length, distance, width,
between different parts of the face that then make it appealing or “beautiful” to the eye. 
In Forbes's article, “Science can be as beautiful as Art”, Richard Feynman writes, “I can appreciate the
beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than [hi s friend who is an artist]
sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty.
I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller
dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes”. This was a very interesting take on the combination
of science, art, and beauty as it rightfully gives respect to all three. A scientist and an artist may see
and agree that a flower is beautiful, but what they notice is obtaining the beauty is up to them. The
aesthetics and depth that each profession will go to observe the beauty depend on not only their given
knowledge but their choice. Below is a basic picture of a rose, and then a microscopic perspective of
that same rose. 


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