Arts and Science are manifestation of beauty and creativity of nature. Prof. Pushpa Mitra Bhargava, eminent scientist and Padma Bhushan awardee, presented seven thesis to show this while delivering a lecture titled “Two Faces of Beauty: Science and Arts”, at the the C R Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics & Computer Science (AIMSCS) located at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) campus.

First thesis: There is inherent beauty in most of structures that the nature gives rise to at all levels of evolution. For example, a snapshot of the galaxy in the universe, honey hive, spider web – are all beautiful.

Second thesis: The nature follows laws of sciences in its creation and mathematical abstraction of all sciences can be considered as vital force of nature.
FIBONACCI series is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …, where the series has 0 and 1 as first two elements and all further elements are obtained by summing immediately previous two elements. One such example is use of FIBONACCI series numbers by the nature. Number of petals in a flower often follows FIBONACCI series pattern. Again, in pineapple, one can find presence of FIBONACCI series pattern.

Third thesis: Certain mathematical theories find greater usage than other theories.

Fourth thesis: In the process of evolution, human beings are bestowed with higher ability to appreciate beauty and creativity.

Fifth thesis: When human beings create, they create beauty that finds analogy with the nature’s creations.

Sixth thesis: Creativity and beauty are relative in all areas of the science and arts and follow common methodology.

Seventh thesis: Scientists are intuitively partial to beauty as evidently found in preferred selection of aesthetically satisfying choices.

Prof. Bhargava opined that without being challenged to pursue curiosity, one can’t create good science or art. Our constitution specifies development of scientific temperament as a duty; development of aesthetic temper should also be equally recognised constitutionally as a duty.

This lecture was delivered on March 14, 2015 as part of the one day workshop on “Mathematics, Music and Nature”, under Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India (DST) sponsored project on Mathematical Legacy of Ramanujan and its Applications at the AIMSCS.

-By Kumar Ashish, Research Scholar, School of Economics
E: Kumar.Ashish@uohyd.ac.in