Attacking a figure like Feynman on this issue is a bit of an attack of the Lilliputians. The aesthetic reaction to much of physics is more an exclamation than hard philosophy of science, and the sentiment is frequent when confronting the elegance of much of modern physics. The idea is certainly open to challenge if made into a definite heuristic principle but as an emotional reaction it remains significant. That elegance remains even after the theories become falsified…
In any case Pugliucci is a notorious muddlehead about darwinism and natural selection and makes a mockery of his essay with nonsense about the evolution of an aesthetic sense via natural selection, a proposition that makes Feynman’s errors seem trivial. Anyone confused about darwinism is going to have a hard time with the aesthetics of science theories.
And of course, beauty is, notoriously, in the eye of the beholder. What struck Feynman as beautiful might not be beautiful to other physicists or mathematicians. Beauty is a human value, not something out there in the cosmos. Biologists here know better. The capacity for aesthetic appreciation in our species is the result of a process of biological evolution, possibly involving natural selection. And there is absolutely no reason to think that we evolved an aesthetic sense that somehow happens to be tailored for the discovery of the ultimate theory of everything.
Source: Richard Feynman was wrong about beauty and truth in science | Aeon Ideas
