ABSTRACT
At mid-century, both mathematicians and scientific humanists called upon structure to unify the arts and the sciences. Further, members of both communities appealed to a structuralist vision in order to define creativity and aesthetics as common features of both endeavors. Yet the structuralist visions advanced by mathematicians and scientific humanists were also fundamentally at odds with one another. Unlike their humanist colleagues, mathematicians’ universe was not one of images and illustrations. Indeed, for pure mathematicians, the aesthetic nature of mathematics was inversely proportional to its boundedness in reality. Only by closing their eyes to the world, they suggested, could their creativity be expressed. Ironically, at the same time that scientific humanists turned to structure to make science and art more visibly connected, mathematicians insisted that it was structure’s inherent invisibility that joined art and science.
