The scientific consensus on the beauty of snowflakes: A case study for the aesthetics of science

Philosophers of science interested in aesthetics have tended to privilege the epistemic and cognitive dimensions of science. Historians of science interested in aesthetics have largely focused on the aesthetics of scientific images and artefacts. Productive exchanges between these traditions of scholarship have been few and far between. Drawing inspiration from recent studies on the aesthetics of paleontology and geology, I aim to stimulate such exchanges by offering a historically rooted case study for the aesthetics of science, centred not on a theory or discipline but on an object: the snowflake. The history of snowflake science is replete with remarks about the aesthetic qualities of these objects and their study, offering various ways for scholars interested in aesthetics to approach this history. I propose three. First, I address the objects themselves, and how their aesthetic appreciation is related to the goal of understanding their formation. Focusing in particular on the question of the snowflake's symmetry, I show how aesthetic and epistemic values were often "blurred". Second, I look at the embodied practice of observing the objects, and the way aesthetic pleasure influences it. I propose to view this influence in terms of physical costs and aesthetic benefits. Third, I draw attention to the environmental context of observation, and its relevance for the way aesthetic and epistemic understandings blurred.