I love this. You help create an attunement with the concept of experiments themselves.
I think there is one aspect to add — the beautiful experiment must succeed in demonstrating the hypothesis. Unfortunately, failed experiments can be just as beautifully designed, but lose their perceived beauty when they are wrong.
From my readings, it seems like it is somewhat of a matter of debate among philosophers of science whether an experiment could be beautiful even if its results are not that significant or revealing or even wrong. For example, Newton came up with the design of his optical experiments and the corpuscular theory of light while thinking that ether was real. Still, your point is well taken!
Some of the experiments included in this gallery have beautiful results — not just because the images they’ve captured are beautiful to look at. Great to see cutting edge science married to art like this (wonder is at the root of both science and art, ultimately).
This is such a fantastic article, and something I've thought about a lot regarding how biology is done nowadays vs. just a few decades ago. I think the difference is not only because science is getting complicated, and therefore messier - it's also because of the supposed promises of big data and AI. It seems like a lot of money and resources are now flowing towards chasing "big data" methods such as -omics research (RNA-seq etc) and using AI and/or traditional bioinformatics to try and find correlations in large datasets. Doing this kind of research is certainly valid and can indeed provide insights into fundamental biology. But I think we will have a big problem if these kinds of "fishing expeditions," which are not driven by any specific hypothesis, eat up all the money in biology research leaving no funding for the experimentalists.
thank you for the kind feedback! and yes, the technological scaling up of methods available in biology right now is what affords collecting large amounts of data, and we then resort to complex models to predict the behavior of the systems we study based on that data. the systems themselves are complex taken as a whole so in a way it’s a necessity. prediction takes precedence over understanding but maybe it’s the stage of development we find ourselves in at this point
Love the Faust reference! I feel like as the discipline of science has speciated more since late 20's Century, elegant experimental executions are fewer and farther in between. For example in physics, the progression from Galileo's Leaning Tower experiment[1] (gravitation) to Double Slit[2] (quantum mechanics) to Wu's beta decay experiment[3] (parity violation, particle physics) to trying find ever more exotic particles via smashing materials in giant synchrotrons.
I love this. You help create an attunement with the concept of experiments themselves.
I think there is one aspect to add — the beautiful experiment must succeed in demonstrating the hypothesis. Unfortunately, failed experiments can be just as beautifully designed, but lose their perceived beauty when they are wrong.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the piece.
From my readings, it seems like it is somewhat of a matter of debate among philosophers of science whether an experiment could be beautiful even if its results are not that significant or revealing or even wrong. For example, Newton came up with the design of his optical experiments and the corpuscular theory of light while thinking that ether was real. Still, your point is well taken!
How beautiful
Some of the experiments included in this gallery have beautiful results — not just because the images they’ve captured are beautiful to look at. Great to see cutting edge science married to art like this (wonder is at the root of both science and art, ultimately).
https://unswscience.substack.com/p/the-secret-beauty-of-microscope-art?r=62e707
This is such a fantastic article, and something I've thought about a lot regarding how biology is done nowadays vs. just a few decades ago. I think the difference is not only because science is getting complicated, and therefore messier - it's also because of the supposed promises of big data and AI. It seems like a lot of money and resources are now flowing towards chasing "big data" methods such as -omics research (RNA-seq etc) and using AI and/or traditional bioinformatics to try and find correlations in large datasets. Doing this kind of research is certainly valid and can indeed provide insights into fundamental biology. But I think we will have a big problem if these kinds of "fishing expeditions," which are not driven by any specific hypothesis, eat up all the money in biology research leaving no funding for the experimentalists.
thank you for the kind feedback! and yes, the technological scaling up of methods available in biology right now is what affords collecting large amounts of data, and we then resort to complex models to predict the behavior of the systems we study based on that data. the systems themselves are complex taken as a whole so in a way it’s a necessity. prediction takes precedence over understanding but maybe it’s the stage of development we find ourselves in at this point
Love the Faust reference! I feel like as the discipline of science has speciated more since late 20's Century, elegant experimental executions are fewer and farther in between. For example in physics, the progression from Galileo's Leaning Tower experiment[1] (gravitation) to Double Slit[2] (quantum mechanics) to Wu's beta decay experiment[3] (parity violation, particle physics) to trying find ever more exotic particles via smashing materials in giant synchrotrons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v44jEXN4sSY