Truth and Beauty

An exchange of emails with W generated some interesting ideas today. We talked about truth and aesthetic beauty - and how there is a close link between the two. This is not an uncommon idea even in science - where there is great value attached to the elegance and simplicity of a scientific theory. Occam's razor is a principle that is largely applicable in most cases - given a set of data, the simplest theory that fits the data is often the right theory.

The idea of beauty in knowledge is also a theme that is recurrent in the teachings of most religious traditions. Firstly, there is the concept of a "beautiful" God, in some ways. The Baha'i texts, for example, refer in many places to this beauty of God, and how it is reflected in the souls of human beings. Of course, beauty in this context refers not to physical beauty - though in some of the older traditions such as Hinduism, this is often how this beauty is manifested (for example, in the descriptions of Krishna) - but rather to a deep spiritual beauty of which all the beauty of the natural world around us is but an imperfect reflection. A good way to think about this is in the Platonic sense - what we see are just shadows in a cave, and the reality outside the cave, that projects these shadows - and the sun that enables those shadows to be projected is far more glorious, bright and beautiful than we can ever imagine.

There is also a very strong sense of how intrinsically we humans are attracted to this beauty. Given the way we are brought up in society, this innate attraction to beauty largely gets directed towards the material - be it towards a beautiful painting, or an attractive man/woman, or a melodious piece of music. But it is important to realize that again this attraction to physical/natural objects is a reflection of that deeper longing for that spiritual beauty. In the words of Baha'u'llah, "...every man hath been, and will continue to be, able of himself to appreciate the Beauty of God, the Glorified". This statement tells us two important things - first, that there is a glorious Beauty to God, and second that each of us has the ability to appreciate this beauty on our own. It appears, therefore, to be something intrinsic to us, external to the society we're brought up in - though it does get occluded/misdirected by our experiences.

Bringing the discussion back to the idea of simplicity and elegance in scientific theory, I think this is an aesthetic value that also carries over to spiritual thought. Therefore, when it comes to trying to explain the nature of life and the world around us, I believe that the ultimate truth would have a great measure of simplicity and elegance to it. And we already see a glimpse of this in the teachings of the Prophets that have come down to us over time - be it in the Gita, or the Bible or the Koran.

It is important to realize, also, that there are a lot of aesthetic judgments that are essentially subjective - I might like a painting that someone else thinks is horrendous. But I do think there are certain elements to aesthetics - such as simplicity/elegance - that do hold more objective weight. And these are the elements that carry over to scientific/spiritual questions.

What does this mean in terms of how we try and find answers to questions? Does it mean we try and find aesthetically pleasing answers? I believe not. For the truth is beautiful - but not all that is beautiful is necessarily true. And so this link between truth and beauty - which is unsymmetrical - is only useful as an a posteriori check. Given a possible hypothesis for a question, one of the many ways one could check its validity is to check its aesthetic value. And that might give us a hint as to its truth value. However trying to a priori find an aesthetically pleasing theory will probably lead us nowhere.