Form and Content: A Defense of Aesthetic Value in Science

Abstract

Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: aesthetic language is either used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or it is used literally, but the importance of such values for science is unclear. This article introduces a new account that gets around this problem by considering an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. A fit between the content of a thought experiment and the way in which that content is formulated can have important epistemic payoffs by contributing to scientific understanding.