Who can look at images from the Hubble telescope and not feel overwhelming awe for our universe? But do we know what we are looking at in these photographs? Much of what impresses us in these photos is the brilliant colors, the varied hues of the cosmos. And yet, according to the official Hubble web site, “Color in Hubble images is used to highlight interesting features of the celestial object being studied. It is added to the separate black-and-white exposures that are combined to make the final image. Creating color images out of the original black-and-white exposures is equal parts art and science.”

Not only are these images part art, they depend upon the history of art for their powerful effect. To a degree, we learned how to recognize the tinted beauties of the Hubble photographs by looking at nineteenth-century landscape painting like J. M. W. Turner’s study of light “Slave-ship.” The spectral but completely artificial tinting of the photos helps to create a similarly powerful feeling.

This is a dramatic example of science borrowing from art. But some scientists do not limit themselves to borrowing from the paint box; they want to argue that, so far as beauty is concerned, they have entirely displaced the arts.