In a series of posts, concluding today, I have been considering the uncanny correspondence between physical and scientific beauty. Consider various species of daisies and other flowers, whose petals correspond to the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, which is the set of whole numbers in which each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. Is this just a happy coincidence arising from impersonal laws of physics and chemistry, or might it reveal the handiwork of a divine Artist?
A Final Piece to the Argument
Having examined beauty in science from both normative and situational perspectives, in the terms offered by theologian John Frame (see my last post), let me now turn to the existential perspective. What do scientists, like the rest of us, bring to the table when we explore the beauty of the natural world? Human beings, uniquely in nature, are wired for the perception and contemplation of beauty. Although animals do sometimes demonstrate a certain attraction to certain types of beauty, humanity’s aesthetic sense operates on a fundamentally higher level. Philosopher Anthony O’Hear writes:
We hear no stories of animals reflectively, disinterestedly admiring some aesthetic feature of their environment. Even if, as is not the case, we found animals simply gazing at a beautiful sunrise, say, we would not be able to establish that it was an aesthetic judgement. How could we, indeed, when the animal’s action is the only basis on which we have to attribute any judgement or belief at all, and action alone would never be finely nuanced enough to distinguish between an aesthetic choice and a utilitarian one?
As O’Hear goes on to argue, humanity’s aesthetic judgments are also unique in that they’re subject to critique and revision. This, as we saw, is an entailment of beauty’s objectivity. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I used to consider the evergreen forests there to be damp, dreary, and depressing. But now, having lived in many places across the country, I find myself awestruck whenever I return home and see the majestic Douglas fir trees and Western redcedars. My childhood judgment was wrong. I missed the glory that was all around me. This is not like mere sensations of pleasure or pain, which are neither right nor wrong. It follows that our aesthetic judgments involve cognitive powers higher than those of the animals.
From an Evolutionary Perspective
Further, any evolutionary account would require that our aesthetic sense should have served some adaptive function for our ancestors, giving them a survival advantage over their competitors. And yet, as we’ve already established, aesthetic pleasure is by definition disinterested; it transcends the selfish impulse for possession, consumption, or use. How can Kepler’s delight in the Third Law of Planetary Motion in any way be reduced to the supposed survival instincts of our ancestors on the African savanna?
We have seen that science relies on objective criteria for beauty, it reveals beauty in both physical and mathematical forms, and it requires observers uniquely capable of delighting in beauty. All of these features constitute what I’ve called the adaequatio intellectus ad pulchrum, the correspondence of the mind to beauty. What provides the best explanation for these surprising features of reality?
Thomas Aquinas defined beauty as “that which pleases upon being seen.” But let’s supplement that definition with another. In his book The Father of Lights, contemporary theologian Junius Johnson defines beauty as, “that which reminds us of God.” He appeals to the ancient Greek concept of anamnesis — remembering — arguing that the human soul has been implanted with a longing for the perfection behind our experience of beauty. This perfection is the Source of all things, so that as we seek that perfection, we are in a sense returning home. Our experience of beauty amounts to an act of remembering.
In his essay “The Weight of Glory,” C. S. Lewis expresses a similar sentiment:
…Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.
Beauty as a Summons
How should we respond? Here are three suggestions. The first is to follow Lewis’s advice, in his introduction to St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, and read more old books. (The essay was later published as “On the Reading of Old Books” in God in the Dock.) Read Aquinas. Read Kepler. They may have held some views that proved to be mistaken in light of later scientific discoveries, but unfortunately modern science trains us to adopt a posture that Lewis, in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, called “chronological snobbery.” Our default setting is to think that newer is always better, and so we miss a lot of the wisdom of the past, while missing the blind spots in our own culture.
My second suggestion would be to pursue and promote forms of education that bring unity to the disciplines of human knowledge. Go against the modern trend of compartmentalization and specialization, which cuts the STEM fields off from their proper home in philosophy and theology. The premoderns had it right when they referred to science as “natural philosophy.” The classical Christian education movement is doing great work in recovering this more unified and integrated approach. As a starting point, check out the book The Liberal Arts Tradition, by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain.
A third and final suggestion would be to seek to the One who is the source of beauty. Seek the One who has pursued us despite all that we’ve done to mar the beauty of his creation.
I’ll close with this from Boethius (pictured at the top), the last of the Roman philosophers.
O Lord, you govern the universe with your eternal order:
You brought time itself into being, and all that marks
its changes in the heavens and here on the earth, both moving
and also in stillness. Nothing but your love could have prompted you
to bring forth the matter and forms that together make up the world.
From within yourself, ungrudging, you brought out the pattern of all
that is good, inasmuch as it partakes of your own goodness.
Its beauty is your beauty; your mind is the source of its grandeur
as you shaped it to your liking, imposing upon it your order,
which harmonizes the many elements that compose it,
the cold with the fiery hot, the dry with the wet, lest any
fly off on its own and unbalance the equipoise of creation…
Grant me, o father, that gift by which my mind can rise
after its peregrination to the seat of your majesty,
and give me the light to behold through the thick clouds of our skies
a clearer heaven in which your brightness flashes forth.
To the blessed who alone behold it, you are the sole serene
goal in which we may find rest, satisfied and tranquil,
and to see your face is our only hunger, our only thirst,
for you are our beginning, our journey, and our end.
Fifteen centuries ago, when he was falsely accused of treason, exiled from his home, and awaiting his execution, Boethius consoled himself with those words. They were offered as a prayer. In such terms, we too can seek the Source of Beauty.
Editor’s note: This article was first delivered as a speech at the Spring 2026 conference of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation in Memphis, Tennessee.