Beauty in Art and Mathematics: A Common Neural Substrate or the Limits of Language?

Mathematicians often refer to the aesthetic qualities of mathematical works using the same terms and expressions employed by artists and art critics to evaluate visually apprehensible objects. Does this reflect the limits of human language, or is it a subtle indication that vision is somehow connected with the process of understanding and inventing/discovering mathematics? Gian-Carlo Rota and Freeman Dyson have written on the beauty of mathematics and refer to non-visual mathematics in visual terms. Rota discusses the phenomenology of the beauty of mathematics using words and arguments that are strongly reminiscent of those which are used to analyze the issues of beauty and aesthetic relevance in art. Do Rota’s and Dyson’s writings reflect the existence of a connection between mathematics and vision, or do they just reflect the limitations of the human language? Dyson and the Visualization of the Invisible Visual mathematics has become a very popular subject in contemporary mathematics. Ian Stewart's Nature Numbers deals with mathematical objects derived from many different fields of mathematics–e.g. non-linear dynamics, chaos theory, and complexity theory–which can be visually represented by means of computers [1]. In his review of Stewart's book, Freeman Dyson contrasts the “new visual style of mathematical thinking” with the “old fashioned non-visual mathematics, the mathematics of equations and exact solutions”[2]. Yet Dyson uses visual metaphors for criticizing Stewart's mathematical preferences, as well as for addressing his own perception of mathematics. The beauty of Maxwell's equations becomes visible only when you abandon mechanical models, and the beauty of quantum mechanics becomes visible only when you abandon classical thinking [. ] Quantum mechanics runs counter to the two cardinal principles of the new wave of mathematics. (Italics mine)[3]. Dyson also asserts that the Van der Pol equation “illustrates vividly the blindness of mathematicians to discoveries in unfashionable fields,” and finds “examples of mathematical description.that [he would not] consider deep” (Italics mine) [4]. Thus, the lack of appreciation of the “deep” meaning of mathematics that is impossible to visualize is attributed to “blindness. ” These kinds of oxymorons and extreme metaphors are also frequent in critical inquiries, where language is often stretched beyond its literal meaning. For the poet Simonides of Ceos ( c. 556-468 BC), the founder of the ut pictura poesis tradition, painting is mute poetry [5][6]. Leonardo considers poetry a speaking picture, a blind painting [7]. Wölfflin makes the metaphorical distinction between classical painting (tactile, sculpturesque, symmetrical, and closed) and the baroque painting (visual, “painterly,” asymmetric, and open) [8]. Rota and the Phenomenology of Mathematical Beauty Rota tries to “uncover the sense of the term ‘beauty’ as it is used by mathematicians. ” The issue, he argues, is relevant because beauty becomes a matter of contention in an intellectual discipline in which its practitioners “are fond of passing judgments on the beauty of their favored pieces of mathematics” [9]. Beauty is a fuzzy expression to denote a fuzzy sensation of pleasure that itself is the result of the combinations of other fuzzy appreciations such as “elegance,” “surprise,” “potency,” and “opportunity,” all of them conditioned by the ideological context–the historical stage–of the artist and the beholder. Mathematical beauty and artistic beauty are both cultural constructs and active societal work is required to impose the new cannons. “Beauty” and “elegance” are institutional facts, and change according the predominant ideology. There is not a uniform canon of beauty–e.g. the beauty of Picasso's cubist and surrealist portraits is different to the beauty of Filippo Lippi’s La Vergine. The acceptance of new mathematical perspectives and new artistic perspectives is not immediate, and it is well known that mathematical theories and art styles became “objects of beauty” only after new generations are educated in them. Moreover, a given theory may induce pleasure in some mathematicians, and boredom and irritation in others. Rota suggests that mathematicians use the word “beauty” to denote “the phenomenon of enlightenment”–i.e. the capture of the sense of a statement–“while avoiding acknowledgment of the fuzziness of this phenomenon” [10]. To appreciate mathematical beauty it is necessary to understand the mathematics involved–to force the brain to do mathematical work. Grasping the meaning of mathematical texts, not the aesthetic appreciation of its symbols or the sound of its phonetic reading, is what elicits the sensation of pleasure. Appreciation of mathematical beauty requires familiarity with a mathematical theory, and such familiarity is arrived at the cost of time, effort, exercise, and Sitzfleisch rather than by training in beauty appreciation. [11] For Rota, “classical Euclidean geometry is often proposed by non-mathematicians as a paradigm of a beautiful mathematical theory [but not] by professional mathematicians”[12]. The fact that nonmathematicians often find Euclidean geometry pleasant proves Rota's argument. Euclidean geometry is probably the only tiny segment of the vast and expanding mathematical universe that (a minority) of high school students invest time and Sitzfleisch to understand. Art appreciation is also based on understanding, and requires intellectual work and Sitzfleisch. Vision uninformed by previous knowledge and context means blindness. Bernard Berenson observed that “many see paintings without knowing what to look at” [13]. Mitchell, Gombrich and Nelson Goodman agree in that “the innocent eye” is blind [14]. An oeuvre is deemed “beautiful” and not merely elegant or technically accomplished when it makes sense–i.e. when it is enlightening. Moreover, significant images and icons–from prehistoric cave painting to cubism and concrete (abstract) art–are useful because they explain things, open new perspectives, and are symbolic resources. Picasso tried to understand the work of Matisse, his most important competitor [15]. Yet the understanding of a picture does not mean deriving pleasure from it. Matisse understood Cubism and could “read” Picasso and Braque, although he disliked its aesthetics [16]. For Rota, mathematical beauty is associated with shortness and compactness [17]. The grasping of the representative essentials is one of the characteristics that are associated with beauty in the fine arts–e.g. the images depicting animals in the prehistoric caves, the drawings of Picasso and Matisse [18]. The notions of shortness and compactness are complemented with the appreciation of the beauty of “streamlined proofs. ” “Hilbert's original axioms were clumsy and heavy-handed, and required streamlining” [19]. Rota’s use of the concept of streamlining underlines the historicity of the concept of beauty in mathematics. Streamlining began as a visual concept (the course of water and air currents as inferred by visual cues), which did not exist as an aesthetic concept until its invention by automobile and aeronautical designers in 20th Century USA [20]. The aesthetic canons of modernity, therefore, influence the aesthetic cannons of beauty in mathematics. Mathematical beauty is often partial, in the sense that the mathematician often detects beauty in a small component of a much larger structure that is not perceived as beautiful as a whole. The portion that is deemed beautiful is “a brilliant step in an otherwise undistinguished proof” [21]. This is also well known in the fine arts, where isolated segments of an otherwise irrelevant picture (or sculpture) can impress as beautiful when considered in isolation. The photographic enlargements of portions of an oeuvre often disclose a hidden beauty that is lost in the whole. Different sectors of a painting have different meaning for different beholders. Jackson Pollock identified small areas in Picasso’s paintings that justified his claim that the Spanish master was the direct precursor of abstract expressionism. These same areas are considered utterly irrelevant by other observers, which see them as technical accidents resulting from Picasso’s sloppiness and speed. G. H. Hardy and the Element of Surprise G. H. Hardy believed that the beauty of a mathematical proof depends on the element of surprise. Rota concedes that “the beauty of a piece of mathematics is often perceived with a feeling of pleasant surprise [and] instances [can be found] of surprising results which no one has ever thought as classifying as beautiful. ” Still, Rota recognizes “instances of theorems that are both beautiful and surprising abound” and attributes the beauty of Galois theory of equations to “the once improbable notion of a group of permutations” [22]. Surprise is a central ingredient in the appreciation of a work of art, where the unexpected derives from leaps over conventional limits of theme, subject, and style, and humor. The works of Hyeronimus Bosch, Picasso, Dalí, and Magritte are a source of surprises, and the pleasure that they elicit is often related to their capacity of surprising the beholder. La blague d' atelier always lurks, with a touch of depravity and/or the inversion of the so called “natural hierarchies. ” In general, this is achieved by depicting conventional objects in new contexts, and things and circumstances that previously were confined to the fringes of artistic representation (where they were mostly unseen), or were not represented at all, suddenly became central and are in the spotlight. In Courbet’s The Burial and The Vagina, the artist jumps over all the conventions of representation of his time. The visual depiction of a group of minor landowners in an obscure French village and the scrupulous anatomical rendition of a body part that is normally hidden suddenly acquire aesthetic relevance. Until Courbet, small landowners