ABSTRACT
Reports abound on the role of beauty for finding truth in mathematics. Philosophical theorizing looked at the epistemic justification of aesthetic factors, but empirical evidence and a theory about the underlying mental mechanisms were largely lacking. The processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure claims that the ease with which information can be processed is the common mechanism underlying perceived beauty and judged truth. After defining beauty and truth, the planned chapter will sketch the philosophical discussion and then introduce the assumptions of the processing fluency theory before reviewing empirical evidence for this account. The question arises whether beauty indeed is truth—that is, does any relationship exist between the perceived aesthetic quality of a mathematical solution and its truth, and is processing fluency the common mechanism? An earlier analysis on the role of fluency in subjectively judged and objective truth reviewed evidence that familiarity with and coherence of information results in fluency and outlined the conditions under which fluency is epistemically justified—that is, related to actual truth. Likewise, it seems likely that the familiarity of mathematicians with their field and the coherence of mathematical rules results in fluency, and, hence, a positive relationship between beauty and truth is plausible.
