Molecular Aesthetics: Blind Alleys and Fertile Soils

1. Introduction Since the advent of synthetic organic chemistry in the mid-19th century, chemists have frequently pointed out the creativity, imagination, and aesthetic inspiration required for chemical synthesis (Root-Bernstein 2003, Jacobs 2006, chaps. III.4-5). Most famously Marcelin Berthelot (1860) compared the chemo-synthetic work to that of the 'arts' because, like artists and unlike other natural scientists, chemists create their own objects of study on a regular basis. Although modern commentators tend to overlook the ambiguity of the term 'arts', which in the 19th century did not mean so much the fine arts but crafts and engineering as opposed to the sciences, the efforts by chemists to relate their science to the formative arts are undeniable. Compared to these ongoing efforts, which are frequently part of a helpless strategy to popularize chemistry, serious aesthetic research is still underdeveloped. While classical anthologies on aesthetics in science have largely focused on mathematical physics – following an almost campaign-like advance by first, and thus far still only, collection of papers on aesthetics in chemistry was not published before 2003, which incidentally had an accompanying part of artistic contributions on " Chemistry in Art " (Specter & Schummer 2003). In contrast to the wide opportunities for aesthetic studies of chemistry, particularly on the role of aesthetic values in the practice of experimentation and theory building (Ball 2005, Schummer et al. 2009), the dominant focus has been on the beauty of molecules, like that of the present volume. Indeed, chemists aesthetically favor molecules that are either symmetrical or look like ordinary objects. That double-preference seems to echo the formative arts in which both geometrical abstraction and imitation of nature have a long tradition. In the following I will scrutinize, first, if molecules can be objects of aesthetics at all; second, if symmetry is a useful aesthetic criterion for beauty; and, third, explore the hidden aesthetic potential behind molecules that " look " like ordinary objects. In order to do so it is necessary to start with the oldest molecular theory, which happened to be built on aesthetic ideas and which is frequently referred to in contemporary claims about the beauty of chemical products.