Science and aesthetics do not contradict each other but complement each other * Science only adds to the appreciation we have for poetic beauty and experiences with emotional depth
These good deeds give us pleasure, but how can they possibly give us pleasure? Because nature has hidden in our bosom a love for others, a sense of duty towards others, or in short a moral sense that arouses in us an uncontrollable urge to feel the plight of others and help them.
Thomas Jefferson, 1814
Science only adds to the appreciation we have for poetic beauty and experiences with emotional depth.
The nineteenth-century English poet John Keats once complained that Isaac Newton "destroyed the poetics of the rainbow by squeezing it into a glass prism." The natural sciences, he laments, "will spread the wings of an angel/ defeat every mystery with law and caveat/ drive away the ghosts and the dwarves of treasures/ break the rainbow."
Does a scientific explanation for a certain phenomenon reduce its beauty or its ability to inspire poetry and emotional experiences? I think not. Science and aesthetics complement each other - not contradict each other, add to each other - not subtract. I am moved almost to tears, for example, when I look through my small telescope at the blurry patch of light that is actually the Andromeda Galaxy. It's not just to my face that she's beautiful, but also because I realize that the photons of light hitting my retina left Andromeda 2.9 million years ago, when our ancestors were still small-brained hominids. And I am doubly excited because it was only in 1923 that the astronomer Edwin Hubble concluded that this "nebula" is actually a distant extragalactic system of enormous dimensions. He did this using a 2.5-meter telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, which sits on the hills overlooking my home in Los Angeles. Eventually Hubble discovered that the light coming from most galaxies is shifted towards the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum (and literally forms the rainbow). The meaning of the discovery was that the universe is expanding after its beginning with a bang. This is an aesthetic science!
The latest attempts to decipher the spectrum of our emotions inspire no less awe than this, attempts described by Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in her book "Why We Love" (Henry Holt Publishing, 2004). Lust is increased by dopamine, a neurotransmitter produced in the hypothalamus, which in turn triggers the release of testosterone, the hormone that stimulates sexual desire. But love is a unifying feeling enhanced by oxytocin, a hormone produced in the hypothalamus and secreted into the bloodstream by the pituitary gland. In women, oxytocin stimulates the contractions of labor and the secretion of milk and encourages the maternal bond with the nursing baby. Its secretion is increased in women and men during sexual intercourse and it reaches its peak in orgasm - this is how the hormone plays a role in strengthening the marital relationship, an evolutionary adaptation that ensures long-term care for helpless babies.
Paul J. Zak of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies at Claremont Graduate University suggests a link between oxytocin and trusting relationships and economic well-being. "Oxytocin is a hormone that causes a good feeling, and we find that it guides the subjects to make decisions even when they cannot clarify why they are behaving in a way that expresses trust or instills trust," Zak explained to me. He claims that trust is one of the most important factors affecting economic growth and therefore a country striving for economic prosperity must encourage positive social interactions by securing a reliable infrastructure, a stable economy and freedom of speech, assembly and trade.
We establish our trust in strangers by affirming and verifying it in our social relationships. James K. Rilling and his colleagues at Emory University, for example, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 36 subjects while they played the prisoner's dilemma game. In this game, cooperations and betrayals lead to different results depending on the actions of the other participants. The researchers found that the subjects who cooperated with each other activated the same areas of the brain that are also activated by portions of dessert, money, cocaine and beautiful faces. And in more detail, the neurons that were particularly affected were those rich in dopamine (the same desire-inducing liquid also associated with addiction) and found in the anteroventral striatum, an area of the midbrain known as the pleasure center. Impressively, the subjects who cooperated reported feelings of increased trust and friendliness toward play partners who behaved like them.
In Charles Darwin's "Notebook M", in which he began to weave the heads of the chapters of the theory of evolution, he wrote this reflection: "He who understands the baboon will do better to contribute to metaphysics than the contribution of Locke" (the English philosopher of the 17th century, c Van Locke, much to engage in metaphysics and political philosophy - the editors). Science now reveals that love is addictive, trust is pleasurable and cooperation makes for a pleasant feeling. Evolution created this reward system to increase the survival of the individuals of our sociable primate species. Those who understand Darwin can therefore benefit from contributing to political philosophy from Jefferson's contribution.
