Wonder at work: the joy of discovery helps scientists flourish

When Robert Gilbert, a professor of biophysics at Oxford University, was at school, he was fascinated by how molecules fit together perfectly, and the beauty of these matched connections has stayed with him. “The way molecules wrap around each other, accommodate each other, and achieve specificity through different kinds of contact is very aesthetically pleasing to me,” he says. “Some of this is down to the symmetry and regulatory rules of nature, but there’s also elegance in the observation itself, in the geometry of the experiment.”

This idea of aesthetics in science is not new. Researchers have long been driven by the underlying beauty or simplicity of concepts and ideas — so much so, it can drive them to pursue one theoretical model over another.

“I think every theoretical physicist comes into science with a vision of beauty and the expectation that nature has a certain blueprint,” says Marcelo Gleiser, professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. When Gleiser started questioning the accepted blueprint in his field during his PhD, he was rewarded with a moment of awe: “I remember I got my first results, and I looked at the equations and everything made sense. At that moment, there was this sense of expanding self, like I was embracing a reality much bigger than myself.”

It seems Gleiser is far from alone in this feeling of transcendence through discovery. An international survey of more than 3,000 physicists and biologists, part of the Work and Well-being in Science study, found more than half of participants felt “a sense of reverence or respect about the things they were discovering” at least a few times a year (C.J. Jacobi et al. Front Psychol. https://doi.org/k5r7; 2022).

The more frequently researchers had these experiences, the more likely they were to be flourishing in their work and lives.

The link between aesthetics and wellbeing

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that sociologist Brandon Vaidyanathan and colleagues at The Catholic University of America set out to test a hypothesis: that the frequency of aesthetic experiences in scientific work is associated with flourishing and eudaimonia — finding motivation and meaning in life.

In the world’s first large-scale study of the role of aesthetics in science, they invited physicists and biologists in India, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States to score how frequently they experienced 12 aesthetic indicators, designed to capture three domains: beauty, awe and wonder. Participants were also asked to report on negative workplace and life experiences such as burnout, publication pressure, mistreatment, serious psychological distress and chronic health issues, allowing the team to model associations of aesthetic experience with ‘flourishing’ (as indicated by the Harvard Flourishing Measure), while controlling for negative and demographic factors.

The findings from nearly 3,500 completed surveys showed that experiences of beauty and awe were frequent: 88% reported “feeling a sense of clarity as they saw how things fit together”, and 87% said they were “thrilled at a new insight” several times a year. Notably, the study found that the frequency of aesthetic experiences had a significant association with flourishing. Scientists who never have aesthetic experiences had a lower score on the flourishing index (44.3) compared with those with the highest frequency of aesthetic experiences (55.9).

This effect remained when stressors such as burnout, mistreatment and stressful life events were included in the analysis, suggesting that aesthetic experiences have a positive and independent association with scientists’ ability to flourish.

“These experiences influence people’s enjoyment of their work,” says Marika Taylor, engineering and physical sciences pro-vice chancellor and head of college at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

Taylor is a theoretical physicist, with an interest in what drives people to become physicists in the first place and spurs them to persevere through challenges. “These data provide a conscious understanding of the extent to which aesthetics drives the work of the community and the need to openly discuss this in our work,” she says. “You can infer some of this from anecdotes or small groups, but a systematic study identifies common issues and beliefs across the whole community.”

A culture open to beauty

Given this emerging link between aesthetic experiences and wellbeing, how can scientists renowned for their rational approach shift towards a more subjective, even emotive, attitude to their work?

“It’s not just the inherent beauty in mathematics or molecular sciences that inspires researchers,” says Gilbert. “There’s a common response as humans, a spirituality, where scientists respond in a consistent way to things they perceive as beautiful — they value them, want to spend time with them. They raise the human spirit. I think this survey reflects this holistic vision of the scientist as a human being and shows there is a spiritual aspect to science that we can all be a little less ashamed of talking about.”

Taylor agrees that many scientists would not instinctively see through this aesthetic lens, and that it’s essential to translate these findings into practical steps that resonate with different communities. “I think if we framed the results as a need to build time into researchers’ schedules for reflection, asking themselves ‘Why am I doing this work? Why am I taking this path?’, this would help people understand how this reflective, open-minded approach links into wellbeing, fulfilment and achieving potential.”

The importance of open-mindedness is backed by the most recent analysis of survey data, published in Frontiers in Psychology. The findings suggest that certain personality traits are critical to shaping aesthetic experiences in science: openness was associated with the likelihood of experiencing awe, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness (but not extroversion – the tendency to focus on gratification from outward sources) were strong predictors of personality types who most frequently had aesthetic experiences.

This lends weight to the argument for truly diverse teams, not only in terms of gender, sexuality and ethnicity, but also perspectives, in all roles working as part of the scientific endeavour.

“If we want a new kind of research community that is intellectually rigorous while also being open-hearted and kind it means inviting all people in,” says Gleiser. “I think science and scientists are in a moment of change. We are building a more open, egalitarian learning community. Gone is the old model of the lone scholar who would not listen to their students’ ideas. What we can do as professors, educators, mentors and peers is to create a community of engagement, where the outlook is positive and active, and I think appreciation of beauty is a way of facilitating that transition. How wonderful would that be?”