The Two Faces of Beauty

Science and Art are both manifestations of beauty and creativity. As mankind has evolved and as science has progressed, artistic creations by humans have become more abstract-like mathematics, which is the abstraction of all sciences. The authors of this unusual work postulate some critical ideas on science, art and aesthetics, and establish that we need both, a scientific temper and the temper of art.

The eight theses that relate to science and art, and their rationale presented in this book are a culmination of observations, conversations, readings, ideas exchanged, and thoughts that span a journey of six decades. The accompanying DVD is a reproduction of two shows held in Hyderabad of MF Husain’s 25 paintings on some of the most important events of the last century with their description as written by Bhargava. The CD records the music Susumo Ohno, an American geneticist, created by converting the language of DNA into the language of music.

Contents:
Introduction
Definitions
The Theses:
The First Thesis: Nature is inherently beautiful at all levels of evolution
The Second Thesis: Nature follows laws of science
The Third, Fourth and Fifth Theses: Nature loves certain mathematical relationships that we are genetically programmed to recognize, such recognition giving us an evolutionary advantage
The Sixth Thesis: Man’s aesthetic creations are inspired by nature
The Seventh Thesis: All forms of creativity have elements of beauty
The Eighth Thesis: A scientist is intuitively partial to beauty
Conclusions
Limitations