Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true." ~ http://edge.org/Simplicity is elegance a math teacher once told me. That premise is holding up. Each year, John Brockman, the manager of Edge.org puts forward an open-ended question to the world's greatest scholars and intellectuals and to those of us who are just nosy, who are used to responding to background noise.
