There is a long tradition among scientists of comparing scientific models, images, theories and experiments to works of art. We are told that Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, the double helix structure of DNA molecules, and images of colliding particles are beautiful, and that, just like works of art, they evoke in us aesthetic responses. Scientists themselves, like artists, are praised for their creativity, originality and aesthetic sensibility. Einstein, for one, regarded the American physicist Albert Michelson, who with Edward Morley co-designed the experiment to measure the velocity of Earth relative to the ether, as ‘the Artist in Science’, claiming that not only did Michelson care for devising a good…