FU, Lyu (2025) Beauty Leads to Truth: Aesthetic Induction on Consistency. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The belief that beauty leads to truth is prevalent among contemporary physicists. Far from being a private faith, it operates as a methodological guiding principle, essentially when physicists have to develop theories without new empirical data. However, it is unclear how beauty should be understood here for this belief to be justified not merely as useful but as true. In this article, I propose an interpretation of "beauty leads to truth" as "ugliness leads to falsehood," where "ugliness" refers to a lack of formal harmony, namely, a lack of consistency; in other words, "beauty leads to truth" is interpreted as "inconsistent theories cannot be true." As this article will show, this conviction (that inconsistent theories cannot be true) is indeed utilized as a methodological principle in scientific practice. Nevertheless, finding a justification is not easy, for this conviction is not merely a logical requirement, nor is it readily supported by direct observation or theoretical considerations. The sole non-circular justification seems to lie in a meta-induction: historically, inconsistent theories are less successful than their consistent successors. This constitutes an aesthetic induction, for (in)consistency can be understood as an aesthetic property, at least within a hermeneutic context, and it may perform a genuinely aesthetic role in this meta-induction. In this sense, "inconsistent theories cannot be true" is a specific instance of "beauty leads to truth," or, alternatively, "ugliness leads to falsehood."

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID FU, Lyu iamfulv@gmail.com 0009-0003-6774-5998
Keywords:	mathematical beauty, paraconsistent logic, meta-induction, Dialetheism, Pythagoreanism, applicability of mathematics
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Values General Issues > Confirmation/Induction Specific Sciences > Mathematics General Issues > Philosophers of Science General Issues > Values In Science
Depositing User:	Mr Lyu FU
Date Deposited:	03 Jul 2025 21:06
Last Modified:	03 Jul 2025 21:06
Item ID:	25787
DOI or Unique Handle:	DOI : 10.1007/s11229-025-05137-w
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Values General Issues > Confirmation/Induction Specific Sciences > Mathematics General Issues > Philosophers of Science General Issues > Values In Science
Date:	21 June 2025
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/25787

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