BLOG #2: Is science “beautiful”?

Science is sometimes an objective sport, one characterized by a lack of emotion and personal intention. The sophisticated technology, institutional structure, and intimidating jargon of the scientific industry as a whole have created a false illusion of mechanical power. This illusion is propelled further by the way that scientists are depicted in media: serious, organized and focused. Here are some images that come up when I looked at the google images for the word “science.” I think it’s hilarious that these little cartoons are expressionless, static and all are manipulating some machinery. It isn’t common to see images of scientists just pondering their work, looking introspectively off into the distance.
 

Even scientific laboratories can appear daunting. A space like “the clean room” at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab would look like a scene straight out of the twilight zone to the average person, whose scientific education ended after learning how to make ice cream in their high school chemistry class.


I believe that western society has formed an ambiguous notion of science as “simply a means for acquiring an objective truth.” However, this cannot be true, or perhaps a complete truth. Science is a distinctly human endeavor, born out of a natural curiosity about the world. It does not always begin with a quest for truth so much as a question about or a fascination with, some aspect of life that can be researched. It’s essential to recognize that this eagerness to better understand the way that things work is the catalyst for scientists and so many other working professionals to begin their careers. And in this threshold phase of the scientific process, I think one will find that a scientist’s perception of beauty and nature is the most potent influence upon the future of their research. 
It’s simple: if a scientist, a human being, becomes enamored with something they find beautiful or intricate, they might end up studying it. “The mathematician and astronomer Henri Poincaré said: “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, and life would not be worth living… I mean the intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp.”' It is nearly impossible to create a universal definition of what it means to be “beautiful." We can conclude that people are motivated to understand and explain beauty through methods like art and science, and the final product may also be beautiful. 
Take, for example, the famous mathematician and physicist, Paul A.M. Dirac. His work was “concerned with the mathematical and theoretical aspects of quantum mechanics.” In 1925 he began working on Heisenberg’s new work on quantum mechanics and eventually received attention for introducing special relativity into his famous wave equation. What makes him significant in the conversation of art and science, is that he has been quoted regarding the mathematical achievements of others, including Heisenberg, as “ugly.” He claimed that “a physical law must possess mathematical beauty.” Dirac had an atypical understanding of what beauty might be, but it sheds light on the fact that beauty is an utterly subjective concept. Achievements in the sciences characterize his life, but his idea of beauty constructed his intentions and successes. REFERENCES:
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1933/dirac/biographical/
https://philosophynow.org/issues/17/Beauty_and_Science

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