E=mc². Einstein’s great equation represents a pinnacle of mathematical purity. But as the evidence piles up which general relativity struggles to account for, is the very elegance of Einstein's theories preventing scientists from updating them? Is there always beauty in truth, or are aesthetics a distraction from the fundamental mission of science?

Jon Butterworth is a physics professor at University College London. He is a member of the UCL High Energy Physics group and works on the Atlas experiment at Cern's Large Hadron Collider. His book, Smashing Physics: The Inside Story of the Hunt for the Higgs was published in May 2014.

Here, he speaks to the IAI about quantum physics, the Standard Model, and the relationship between beauty and scientific truth.

You have said in the past that beauty is found in simplicity, but isn’t it actually the complex nature of the world that inspires awe?

Obviously it’s a subjective point of view but, for me, what inspires awe is the fact that such complexity can arise for some very simple underlying principles. It’s the combination of complexity and simplicity. If the universe was all manifestly simple, that wouldn’t be so impressive. But the fact that you can see all this complexity and wonder around us and it arises, perhaps, from some really elegant principles, to me that’s where the beauty lies.

Why is it rational to use the simpler theory to explain phenomena? Could using this approach lead us to something which is beautiful but untrue? Is beauty perhaps a distraction?

Given that science is experimental, it’s unlikely to settle on something that’s actually wrong, because in the end it has to be judged against what we observe. But yes, it’s certainly true that beauty could be a distraction, that people could place too much weight on the aesthetic concerns when really the data is telling us something different. It’s certainly true that we could go the wrong way because of our prejudice to follow what we think is the simpler model or simpler theory. But you have to use whatever guide you can find. In the end, the data keep you honest. If you’re not meeting the data, you’re not really doing science; you’re doing maths or something else entirely.

Can science really be communicated in aesthetic terms? Not all scientists will find beauty in the same principles, though they may find truth.  

That’s right – you’ve got to be very careful about being too universal about what beauty is. On some level it’s a cultural construct, and while the way we approach scientific theories is also born out of our culture, the hope is – and it’s certainly true at least a lot of the time – that science is striving towards an objective truth, some objective understanding of the phenomena around us. That understanding would be intelligible to a space alien who we’ve never communicated with before but who was living in the same universe with the same physical laws. By contrast, they may have a completely idea of what beauty is. So science is embedded in the culture that does it, but it is striving to be something a little more objective. That means beauty, you could argue, is an unreliable guide. But very often beauty does work – and you can tell whether it works or not because of the data.

Surely you find certain principles beautiful because they represent evidence for your theories?