Beauty

Merriam-Webster defines beauty as “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit”. Beauty is something that has been debated for centuries, and yet is one of the least tangible ideas to pin down. There are a lot of components that go into beauty, such as judgement, subjectivity, sight, aesthetics, symmetry, and more. But within each of those adjectives, there lies a fatal flaw. For example, souls can be beautiful without needing to be seen, something can be beautiful without being symmetrical, and so on. Regardless of how difficult it is to understand what beauty is to every individual, beauty seems to have an intrinsic quality that makes people like it, be drawn to it, and interested in it. Although many people don’t think of aesthetics and beauty when they think of science, it has a lot of the same illusory qualities that beauty epitomizes.

With inductive reasoning in science, you attempt to find patterns in nature and apply them to how the world works. When thinking about beauty, we often associate it with patterns and symmetry which is exactly what we strive for in science. It’s a puzzle of understanding the natural world and how all of its components fit together seamlessly. There is definitely beauty in science and a scientific discovery. The process of figuring out how the world works is a difficult one, and watching it come together can be rewarding and a beautiful process within itself. There is something about discovery and creation that makes people excited, especially when you are solving the mysteries of life.

There are also many aspects of nature that are beautiful that can be translated into art in many forms. We are all inspired by nature and are trying to understand it from the chemical building blocks that create its very foundation, to the patterns in its complex systems. From the smallest atoms and how they form, to the vastness of the universe, there is something incredibly alluring about the mysteries about the world around us. Most people, when looking at a photograph of the vast expanses of the night sky will comment on its beauty. A scientist will see that beauty and wonder the pattern that creates it, question the form, and try to understand the unknown. As does the artist. They are drawn to the natural world and the unknown for the same reasons. They are both inspired by the beautiful.

Although beauty is subjective, science tries its best not to be, but that does not mean that they can’t intertwine. In art and in life, people often talk about a ‘beauty’ or ‘muse’ as being a source of inspiration, which is undoubtedly the same in science. Why does an astronomer study the stars? Because they are her muse, her inspiration, and her source of curiosity that she wants to explore. It’s possible to find beauty in almost anything, especially when it is in the eye of the beholder.


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