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On Aesthetics in Science (Design Science Collection)

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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.