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Elegance and empiricism

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 693–694 (2010)Cite this article

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C60 was discovered in 1985 but it took five years to confirm that this famous molecule was spherical. Chris Toumey revisits a debate that highlighted different approaches to science.

The best scientific explanations satisfy two standards at the same time: they are elegant and they are empirically substantiated. When a theory or a model explains a phenomenon clearly, directly and economically, we say it is elegant: one idea, easy to understand, can account for a large amount of data and answer many questions. The empirical qualities of an explanation are complementary but different, with multiple lines of evidence leading to a hypothesis that can be independently tested by other scientists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chris Toumey is at the University of South Carolina NanoCenter. Toumey@mailbox.sc.edu,

    Chris Toumey

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  1. Chris Toumey
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Toumey, C. Elegance and empiricism. Nature Nanotech 5, 693–694 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.195

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