Truth and Beauty in Cosmology: Does the Universe Have an Aesthetic?

Mercury, January/February 2004 Table of Contents

Image courtesy of NASA and Hubble Heritage Team.

by Chris Impey

Astronomy is an empirical science, yet scientific definitions of truth and beauty are closely tied to the fact that mathematics appears to provide an accurate description of the physical Universe.

Cosmology is not always beautiful to the practitioner. Consider on the one hand the petty professional rivalries, the computers that can’t calculate the quantity you want, the clever ideas discarded like a child’s broken toys, the photons that travel billions of light-years only to hit a cloud or fall uselessly to the ground beside your telescope.

On the other hand, there is an undeniable grandeur to the Universe. For a species only a thousand generations removed from savagery, many of whose members still live in poverty and misery, humans' goal of understanding the origin of time, space, and matter is audacious indeed.

Is the Universe beautiful? A cosmologist might blink uncomprehendingly at the question. As George Santayana has said, "Art critics talk about theories of art; artists talk about where to buy good turpentine." Yet the question is well motivated because a similar aesthetic sense drives both cosmologists and other creative thinkers.

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