Form and Content: A Defence of Aesthetic Value in Science

Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the content of a thought experiment, and the way in which that content is formulated, can have important epistemic pay offs through contributing to scientific understanding.