Can an idea be beautiful? Mathematicians often describe arguments as “beautiful” or “dull,” and famous scientists have claimed that mathematical beauty is a guide toward the truth. Do laypeople, like mathematicians and scientists, experience mathematics aesthetically?
Dr. Samuel Johnson discusses the research conducted for this and sheds light on broader issues in how and why humans have aesthetic experiences of abstract ideas Dr. Samuel Johnson conducts research in cognitive science, focusing on heuristics and strategies that people intuitively use to evaluate hypotheses. He finds that these same principles guide very different psychological processes, including causal reasoning, categorisation, and visual perception; that they are used by young children; and that they feed into complex social processes, such as mentalising, stereotyping, and moral judgment. For this research, he was was awarded the 2017 Robert Glushko Dissertation Prize from the Cognitive Science Society. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at [ Ссылка ]
