Truth and Beauty
Many debate the traditional belief that science is concerned with truth, while art is concerned with beauty. Empiricists see no role for beauty in science and, therefore, make a strict distinction between art and science. Integrative philosophers, on the other hand, view science and art as inseparable, with beauty and truth both playing a vital role in science. This paper discusses the differences between empiricism and integrative philosophy and describes how they derive competing opinions concerning the role of beauty and truth in science.
Empiricism originated in Vienna in the 1920s from a motivation to distinguish science from pseudo-sciences. To do so, empiricists divided theoretical statements into three classes: 1) logical and mathematical terms (which are true by definition); 2) theoretical terms; and 3) observation terms (material things and observable properties arising from sense data). Any 'scientific' theory must make explicit links known as correspondence rules between theoretical terms and observation terms. Theories that lacked a correspondence with reality were deemed metaphysical and nonsensical. Therefore, logical empiricists differentiate the relationship between beauty (a stimulus involving an aesthetic experience) and truth (a belief you have complete confidence it). A quote by physicist Roger S. Jones illustrates empiricist view of truth and beauty in science, "The acid test of any scientific theory is, first and foremost, its agreement with the facts of the physical world. It is empiricism, not aesthetics, that is the backbone of science"
In the 1950's, chemist turned philosopher, Michael Polanyi, introduced a new integrative philosophical view of science. Polanyi believed that creative acts (especially acts of discovery) are charged with strong personal feelings and commitments. Arguing against the then dominant empiricist position that science was value-free, Michael Polanyi coupled a concern with reasoned and critical interrogation with other, more 'tacit', forms of knowing. For Polanyi, the most significant use of Integrative Philosophy for science was for the examination of selective and heuristic functions in scientific originality. He believed that these functions and their personal elements can be separated only artificially. The personal element in the selective function is an aesthetic response, and in heuristic function it is a goal-directed striving as the following Polyani quote clarifies:
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