On Aesthetics in Science (Design Science Collection) [Hardcover]

WECHSLER (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: Birkhäuser Boston; 1 edition (February 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0817633790
• ISBN-13: 978-0817633790
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,562,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Harmless, March 9, 2008

By 

Viktor Blasjo - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Aesthetics in Science (Design Science Collection) (Hardcover)

This utterly harmless collection fails to reach any insights on the role of aesthetics in science. Miller's paper on visualisation in quantum mechanics, for example, is nothing but a straightforward survey of the early history of quantum mechanics along with the obvious observation that some people did not like the idea of a theory with no visual-mechanical interpretation while other found it acceptable while admitting that there were downsides (highly technical; consistency not obvious). Miller offers no further reflections or conclusions on the role of aesthetics in his entire 30-page paper. The other articles are similarly vacuous so far as substantial connections between aesthetics and science is concerned. To illustrate this by one further example, I shall point to Papert's article, which, although shallow, is rather amusing. Papert performed an experiment where he asked people to prove that the square root of 2 is irrational. The usual approach is to assume sqrt(2)=p/q and derive a contradiction. The natural intermediate step is p^2=2q^2. "All subjects ... show unmistakable signs of excitement and pleasure when they hit on [this equation], ... [even before they] are able to say what they will do next, and, in fact, ... even in cases where no further progress is made at all." (p. 111). Papert suggests a way of thinking about this phenomena in a broader aesthetic context. "The original equation is formalized as a situation frame with case slots for 'three actors,' of which the principle or 'subject' actor is sqrt(2). The other two actors, p and q, are subordinate dummy actors whose roles are merely to make assertions about the subject actor. ... Now p has become the subject, and the previous subject, sqrt(2), has vanished." (p. 112). Thus the situation is analogous to an analysis of a literary work which reveals an intrinsic way of looking at an important relationship between minor characters previously thought of only in relation to the main character.