Online research in philosophy

The various aesthetic phenomena found repeatedly in the scientific enterprise stem from the role of God as artist. If the Creator is an artist, how and why natural scientists study the divine art work can be understood using theological aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The aesthetic phenomena considered here are as follows. First, science reveals beauty and the sublime in natural phenomena. Second, science discovers beauty and the sublime in the theories that are developed to explain natural phenomena. Third, the search for beauty often guides scientists in their work. Fourth, where beauty is perceived, feelings of the sublime often also follow upon further contemplation. This linkage of beauty in science with truth and the sublime runs counter to most aesthetic theory since Kant. Scholarship in theological aesthetics has recently argued that the modern and postmodern elevation of the sublime over beauty is merely a preference that reveals a bias against transcendence—against God. If doing and understanding science can show this sundering of the sublime from the beautiful to be in error, science also gives evidence of transcendence.

I. A. Kieseppä's criticism of the methodological use of the theory of verisimilitude, and D. B. Resnik's arguments against the explanation of scientific method by appeal to scientific aims are critically considered. Since the notion of verisimilitude was introduced as an attempt to show that science can be seen as a rational enterprise in the pursuit of truth, defenders of the verisimilitude programme need to show that scientific norms can be interpreted (at least in principle) as rules that try to increase the degree of truthlikeness of scientific theories. This possibility is explored for several approaches to the problem of verisimilitude.

I. A. Kieseppä''s criticism of the methodological use of the theory of verisimilitude, and D. B. Resnik''s arguments against the explanation of scientific method by appeal to scientific aims are critically considered. Since the notion of verisimilitude was introduced as an attempt to show that science can be seen as a rational enterprise in the pursuit of truth, defenders of the verisimilitude programme need to show that scientific norms can be interpreted (at least in principle) as rules that try to increase the degree of truthlikeness of scientific theories. This possibility is explored for several approaches to the problem of verisimilitude.

There is a popular view that the alleged meaning shifts resulting from scientific revolutions are somehow incompatible with the formulation of general norms for scientific inquiry. We construct methods that can be shown to be maximally reliable at getting to the truth when the truth changes in response to the state of the scientist or his society.

This paper argues that evaluation of the truth and rationality of past scientific theories is both possible and profitable. The motivation for this enterprise is traced to recent discussions by I. Lakatos, L. Laudan and others on the import of history for the philosophy of science; several objections to it are considered and T. S. Kuhn is found to advance the most substantive. An argument for establishing judgements of rationality and truth in the face of scientific revolutions is presented; finally evidence is offered for the value of such assessments to historiography and to debates on scientific progress.

This paper discusses Theo Kuipers' account of beauty and truth. It challenges Kuipers' psychological account of how scientists come to appreciate beautiful theories, as well as his attempt to justify the use of aesthetic criteria on the basis of a "meta-induction." I propose an alternative psychological/philosophical account based on emotional coherence.

In this article I give a naturalistic-cum-formal analysis of therelation between beauty, empirical success, and truth. The analysis is based on the onehand on a hypothetical variant of the so-called `mere-exposure effect'' which has been more orless established in experimental psychology regarding exposure-affect relationshipsin general and aesthetic appreciation in particular (Zajonc 1968; Temme 1983; Bornstein 1989;Ye 2000). On the other hand it is based on the formal theory of truthlikeness andtruth approximation as presented in my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism (2000).The analysis supports the findings of James McAllister in his beautifulBeauty and Revolution in Science (1996), by explaining and justifying them.First, scientists are essentially right in regarding aesthetic criteria useful for empiricalprogress and even for truth approximation, provided they conceive of them as less hard thanempirical criteria. Second, the aesthetic criteria of the time, the `aesthetic canon'', maywell be based on `aesthetic induction'' regarding nonempirical features of paradigms of successfultheories which scientists have come to appreciate as beautiful. Third, aestheticcriteria can play a crucial, schismatic role in scientific revolutions. Since they may well be wrong, they may, in the hands of aesthetic conservatives, retard empirical progress and hence truth approximation, but this does not happen in the hands of aesthetically flexible, `revolutionary'' scientists. We may find totallyopposite things beautiful: a simplemathematical principle as well as a series of unrepeatable complex contingencies. It is a matter of psychology.(Stephen Jay Gould, translated passage from (Kayzer 2000, 30)).

In this article I give a naturalistic-cum-formal analysis of the relation between beauty, empirical success, and truth. The analysis is based on the one hand on a hypothetical variant of the so-called 'mere-exposure effect' which has been more or less established in experimental psychology regarding exposure-affect relationships in general and aesthetic appreciation in particular (Zajonc 1968; Temme 1983; Bornstein 1989; (Ye 2000). On the other hand it is based on the formal theory of truthlikeness and truth approximation as presented in my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism (2000). The analysis supports the findings of James McAllister in his beautiful Beauty and Revolutiorl in Science (1996), by explaining and justifying them. First, scientists are essentially right in regarding aesthetic criteria useful for empirical progress and even for truth approximation, provided they conceive of them as less hard than empirical criteria. Second, the aesthetic criteria of the time, the 'aesthetic canon', may well be based on 'aesthetic induction' regarding nonempirical features of paradigms of successful theories which scientists have come to appreciate as beautiful. Third, aesthetic criteria can play a crucial, schismatic role in scientific revolutions. Since they may well be wrong, they may, in the hands of aesthetic conservatives, retard empirical progress and hence truth approximation, but this does not happen in the hands of aesthetically flexible, 'revolutionary' scientists.

Calling into service the theory of truth approximation of his (1997) and (2000), Kuipers defends the view that "beauty can be a road to the truth" and endorses the general conclusions of McAllister (1996) that aesthetic criteria reasonably play a role in theory selection in science. My comments pertain first to the general adequacy of Kuipers's theory of truth approximation; secondly to its methodological aspects; thirdly to the aetiolated role that aesthetic factors turn out to play in his account; and fourthly to the question before us, with a remark on McAllister's doctrine that scientific revolutions are characterized above all by novelty of aesthetic judgement.

In Beauty and Revolution in Science, James McAllister argues that a sophisticated rationalist image of science can accommodate two prominent features of actual scientific practice, namely, appeals to “aesthetic” criteria in theory choice, and the occurrence of scientific “revolutions”. The aesthetic criteria to which scientists appeal are, he maintains, inductively grounded in the empirical record of competing theories, and scientific revolutions involve changes in aestheic criteria bu continuity in empirical criteria of theory choice. I raise difficulties for McAllister's account concerning: (a) the nature and scope of “aesthetic” criteria in science; (b) the rationality of appeals to aestheic criteria in science; (c) the rationality of scientific revolutions.