ABSTRACT
Can experiments be appreciated for their aesthetic value and what would this appreciation be focused on? This chapter identifies a number of categories that are the focus of our aesthetic appreciation of experiments and shows how these categories are rather stable across different experimental traditions. It is argued that we can find aesthetic value in the phenomena unveiled in the experimental set-up, the instruments and tools used, the results that are obtained, the process of conceptualisation of the experimental set-up, the experimental design, and the very performance of the experiment. This chapter draws a distinction between immediately accessible to the senses beauty and intellectual beauty and argues that the ultimate source of aesthetic value is to be found in the relationship between design and significance.
