Research Byte

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue4 1–31 May 2020

Beauty in Science, Science in Beauty - Matthew Colless

The Research Byte for this month is not astrophysics but some variety of metaphysics - an essay I wrote applying evolutionary thinking to the scientific aesthetic, arguing that our sense of beauty in science is a powerful adaptive heuristic that we develop as an effective evolutionary response to the challenging fitness problem of selecting amongst competing hypotheses and paradigms. Caveat: this isn’t a research paper by an expert in the history and philosophy of science, but rather a speculative essay by a working scientist that flows from personal reflection on aspects of the scientific process - your mileage may vary.