A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design

Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder, or rather is it in the lining of our universe? Nobel prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek answers this question, traversing over 2,000 years of contemplation on the place of beauty within science and art. Beauty has always perplexed us, attracting thinkers from Pythagoras, Plato, Newton, and Einstein to its intrusive call. Though our understanding of beauty, science, and art has evolved significantly, our inborn fascination hasn’t diminished, leaving Wilczek to propose that perhaps the physical structure of the universe is built by beauty. Perhaps, at the most fundamental level, the math that stitches the world together gives birth to forms we recognize as inherently lovely—perhaps a simple number blooms color, a flower, or maybe even a song.