Form and content: a defence of aesthetic values in science

Alice Murphy

doi:10.1017/psa.2023.46

Form and content: a defence of aesthetic values in science

Alice Murphy

Philosophy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	669-685
Journal	Philosophy of Science
Volume	90
Issue number	3
Early online date	23 Feb 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2023.46
Publication status	Published - 1 Jul 2023

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10.1017/psa.2023.46Licence: CC BY

Murphy_2023_PoS_Form-content_CC
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Final published version, 210 KBLicence: CC BY

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Form and content: a defence of aesthetic values in science

Abstract

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