The Elusive Synthesis: Aesthetics and Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 182)

The tension between art and science may be traced back to the Greeks. What became "natural philosophy" and later "science" has traditionally been posed as a fundamental alternative to poetry and art. It is a theme that has commanded central attention in Western thought, as it captures the ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus over what deserves to order our thought and serve as the aspiration of our cultural efforts. The modern schi sm between art and science was again clearly articulated in the Romantic period and seemingly grew to a crescendo fifty years aga as a result of the debate concerning atomic power. The discussion has not abated in the physical sciences, and in fact has dramatically expanded most prominently into the domains of ecology and medicine. Issues concerning the role of science in modern society, although heavily political, must be regarded at heart as deeply embedded in our cultural values. Although each generation addresses them anew, the philosophical problems which lay at the foundation of these fundamental concerns always appear fresh and difficult. This anthology of original essays considers how science might have a greater commonality with art than was perhaps realized in a more positivist era. The contributors are concerned with how the aesthetic participates in science, both as a factor in constructing theory and influencing practice. The collec­ tion is thus no less than a spectrum of how Beauty and Science might be regarded through the same prism. Front Matter....Pages I-XXIV Introduction....Pages 1-12 The Aesthetic Construction of Darwin’s Theory....Pages 13-48 The Sciences and Arts Share a Common Creative Aesthetic....Pages 49-82 Beautiful Experiments in the Life Sciences....Pages 83-101 Abstract Painting and Astronomical Image Processing....Pages 103-124 Looking at Embryos: The Visual and Conceptual Aesthetics of Emerging Form....Pages 125-151 Form and Function in the Molecularization of Biology....Pages 153-168 Scientists’ Aesthetic Preferences Among Theories: Conservative Factors in Revolutionary Crises....Pages 169-187 Objectivity: False Leads from T. S. Kuhn on the Role of the Aesthetic in the Sciences....Pages 189-202 Kant and the Aesthetic-Expressive Vision of Mathematics....Pages 203-225 Physics as an Art: The German Tradition and the Symbolic Turn in Philosophy, History of Art and Natural Science in the 1920s....Pages 227-249 Intersections of Art and Science to Create Aesthetic Perception: The Problem of Postmodernism....Pages 251-266 The Art of Displaying Science: Museum Exhibitions....Pages 267-288 From Descartes’ Dream to Husserl’s Nightmare....Pages 289-312 Back Matter....Pages 313-329

This collection of essays ranges from phenomenological descriptions of the beautiful in science to analytical explorations of the philosophical conjunction of the aesthetic and the scientific. The book is organized around two central tenets. The first is that scientific experience is laden with an emotive content of the beautiful, which is manifest in the conceptualization of raw data, both in the particulars of presenting and experiencing the phenomenon under investigation, and in the broader theoretical formulation that binds the facts into unitary wholes. The second major theme acknowledges that there may be deeply shared philosophical foundations underlying science and aesthetics, but in the twentieth century such commonality has become increasingly difficult to discern. The problem accounts in large measure for the recurrent debate on how to link Science and Beauty, and the latent tension inherent in the effort to tentatively explore what is oftentimes only their intuited synthesis.

This collection of essays ranges from phenomenological descriptions of the beautiful in science, to analytical explorations of the philosophical conjunction of the aesthetic and the scientific. The latent tension inherent in the effort to explore the synthesis of "beauty" and science is examined. The nature and operation of natural selection are conveyed in the Origin of Species by two famous metaphors, whose history in Charles Darwin's consciousness form the substance of this paper.1