The structural role of aesthetic criteria becomes most visible where instantiation falters. In these contexts, beauty, elegance, and simplicity are invoked not as supplementary guides, but as substitutes for engagement with phenomena.
When experimental access is limited, theoretical development often depends on internal coherence and mathematical construction. Aesthetic considerations provide a way to evaluate, coordinate, and justify theories in the absence of empirical instantiation. A theory may be celebrated for its symmetry, minimalism, or unifying power, even when its predictions are untested or its phenomena inaccessible.
This substitution mirrors other forms of structural surrogacy we have examined. Just as retrodiction, internal consistency, and parameter accommodation support predictive authority, aesthetic criteria stabilise theoretical legitimacy without requiring temporal or experiential commitment. They allow a community to converge on preferred lines of research, to allocate attention and resources, and to confer credibility — all without the cut between theory and world being traversed.
Importantly, aesthetic substitution is not inherently deceptive or consciously misleading. Practitioners often genuinely value elegance and simplicity. Yet these criteria operate structurally: they maintain the appearance of epistemic traction, stabilise research programmes, and subtly protect theories from critique.
By recognising the substitution of aesthetics for engagement, we begin to see how modern physics can sustain authoritative theories in domains where direct observation or empirical testing is limited. The aesthetic turn is not a matter of taste alone; it is a mechanism of structural legitimacy.
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