It’s important not to romanticize the idea of beauty in science. The physicist Steven Weinberg once remarked that a racehorse breeder who says a horse is “beautiful” is just saying that this horse has something intangible in common with horses that have won lots of races. Physicists also use the term in this sense. When we see a beautiful theory, we experience an emotional surge of recognition—but it’s not real, unless the theory goes on to predict many new experiments correctly. In other words, beauty is the part of efficacy that we cannot explain, but can nevertheless perceive. Its pursuit exacts a steep price, but Einstein (and, for that matter, Weinberg) succeeded repeatedly. Scientists committed to meeting the rigorous demand of capturing complex reality in a compact way can still get their glimpses of beauty, regardless of whether they enjoy insider status.
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Pennsylvania