Beauty is truth, truth beauty – a viewpoint from the world of science

The poet John Keats was so enchanted with classical Greek art that he concluded his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn with the lines “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”. Art represented by the urn is an eternal truth. Its beauty conveys the truth through its “unheard melody”. I would not go into further discussion as a literary critic might laugh at my amateurish effort – perhaps rightly so. But what does the world of science think of truth and beauty?

The famous scientist Albert Einstein is reported to have asked the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore whether the Apollo Belvedere, a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity discovered in Italy in the late 15th century, would no longer be beautiful if there were no human beings. Tagore replied with one word - “No”. Einstein replied “I agree with regard to this conception of beauty, but not with regard to truth”. “Why not?” Tagore asked, “truth is realized through men”. Like Einstein, many scientists believe that the laws of physics are eternal. But what appears as truth in science can be falsified or superseded by a superior theory.

Do some scientists share Tagore’s view on truth? Why do we have the laws and constants of physics what they are? The reason some scientists invoke is called the anthropic principle. Simply stated, the anthropic principle holds that the laws of physics we find are so because otherwise, we, human beings, would not be here. Indeed, some scientists think that there are many universes. Universes without human beings might have completely different sets of physical laws and constants.

The idea of beauty is clearer in science than in the arts. A scientific idea or theory is considered to be beautiful when it is expressed in the simplest form. Scientists have a word for this - elegance. A beautiful scientific theory may not be able to explain many known things at the time of discovery. For example, when Polish astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the earth and planets move round the sun, he could not explain many of the observed motions of planets. The existing theory that everything move round the earth could explain them quite accurately using complicated geometrical constructions. However, scientists pursued the elegant idea of Copernicus and found the law of gravitation which can explain planetary motion from a few simple principles. At least one similar situation exists today. Scientists, such as Steven Weinberg, consider the string theory of particle physics to be beautiful because of its elegance although it may not explain some observations.

In the world of arts, elegance is considered to be at least a requirement of beauty. We do not find a human being beautiful if he/she is not dressed elegantly however beautiful his/her features is. More specifically, one of the criteria for literature to be considered beautiful is elegance, interpreted as the economy of words. But this is not all.

Perhaps unknown to Keats, the ancient Indians had gone a step further. “Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram”, they declared. Satyam (truth), Shivam (goodness) and Sundaram (beauty) are one and the same. It has taken time for science to realize this unity of beauty, truth, and goodness and it often takes time for scientists to appreciate the “trinity”. One of the early scientists to understand it was Alfred Nobel whose endowment enables the award of Nobel Prize. If you invent a new type of hydrogen bomb, you will surely not get a Nobel Prize for it. But if you make commercial electricity generation by nuclear fusion viable, you may be considered for one.

A recent classic story about beauty and goodness in science concerns Robert Oppenheimer, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the architects of the world’s first atom bomb. When the first test of the “bomb” (nuclear explosion) was carried out, Oppenheimer was overwhelmed by the beauty of the experiment. In a state of ecstasy he quoted the Bhagavad Gita (a very ancient religious text in Sanskrit) as, “the radiance of a thousand suns … ..I am become death, the destroyer of worlds…”. Oppenheimer changed his mind after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He became one of the chief campaigners against the atom bomb. So the nuclear explosion was not beautiful after all.

The goal of science is not merely to pursue beauty and truth. A scientist needs to think of goodness as well. Otherwise, beauty and truth can not be considered to be one and the same in science.