Beauty as a Compass for Truth

Yes — I think you have to, at some level, in some form, have the feeling for how things might be different and better in order to make a great discovery. I think you can be lucky, but even if you’re lucky and stumble into something, you’ve got to realize that it’s something and that you should pursue it. And that is usually driven by some feeling f... See more

"the creator is an artist above all." yes, that’s what I think may be the most poetic way of stating this conclusion that the world, in large part, does embody beautiful ideas; that if you regard the world as a work of art — first of all, it helps you understand things, and secondly, it’s a pretty good work of art. It has tremendous beauty. It has ... See more

It’s not that there’s some metaphysical concept of beauty that rules the world — beauty is a human experience. It’s something that has to do with how humans react to the world and perceive the world. And it’s notoriously thought to be subjective, but it’s not entirely subjective. There’s a very rich history of art objects and music and what people ... See more

And there’s a lot of positive evidence. It’s not that there’s some metaphysical concept of beauty that rules the world — beauty is a human experience. It’s something that has to do with how humans react to the world and perceive the world. And it’s notoriously thought to be subjective, but it’s not entirely subjective. There’s a very rich history o... See more

And I think that’s the essence of complementarity, that you have to view the world in different ways to do it justice, and the different ways can each be very rich, can each be internally consistent, can each have its own language and rules, but they may be mutually incompatible. And to do full justice to reality, you have to take both of them into... See more