But as we pointed out in connection with scientific paradigm change, logic is not the true engine of scientific progress. Here’s how James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, described the double helix the night he finished his research: “It’s so beautiful, you see, so beautiful.” In science the aesthetic, the beauty of the concept, is so important that Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann was moved to comment, “When you have something simple that agrees with all the rest of the physics and really seems to explain what’s going on, a few experimental data against it are no objection
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