What are some beautiful, rationalist artworks?

Source by Michael Oswald

Betulaster's image [LW(p) · GW(p)] made me think "surely there is a version of this concept that's more polished." Turned out there were several different ones when I googled "self sculpting man". Many of them are sculptures that I suspect work best in person, but I liked this one.

Here's another one.

'Earthrise'. Taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell declared it "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken".

From Wikipedia: An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, one of a number of candlelit scenes that Wright painted during the 1760s. The painting departed from convention of the time by depicting a scientific subject in the reverential manner formerly reserved for scenes of historical or religious significance. Wright was intimately involved in depicting the Industrial Revolution and the scientific advances of the Enlightenment. While his paintings were recognized as exceptional by his contemporaries, his provincial status and choice of subjects meant the style was never widely imitated. The picture has been owned by the National Gallery in London since 1863 and is regarded as a masterpiece of British art. 

I love the ambience of dark fascination in this one. Tension between horror and curiosity.

Worth noting that these are all photographs. (Some of them are modified, e.g. the earth is added from another picture, and some of them are colorized.)

Gwangyang Steel Works

The virtue of scholarship is strong with this one. It makes me want to toil away in a library and have important insights. 

I feel like photography (and in particular, photographs showing interesting physical systems) is a particularly good fit for "rationalist" artwork. For me, one of the top two or three most fundamental principles of rationality is entangling oneself with the world - living in the real world, and appreciating the real world, rather than escaping into one's own imagination. That's not to say imagination is bad, but rather that the role of imagination is to act on the real world, rather than to live on a separate plane of existence. Let the real world inform our beliefs, and use that knowledge to bring our ideas into physical reality.

Photography is a great fit for that, because it portrays physical reality. In some cases, a photograph can help us entangle our own beliefs with reality - as in scientific photographs, like an image of a cell with certain organelles stained. In other cases, a photograph can display the form of some brilliant idea made real - as in the photograph above.

Dr. Zbigniew Religa, a Polish cardiac surgeon, and a nurse, both exhausted after a 23-hour heart transplant; the first in Poland's history. (I don't know much about the story beyond that.)

It's a classic and has been featured on various lists of most influential photos. 

To me this photo honors technical mastery, perseverance and the miracle of modern medicine. 

Representing existential risks. A lost opportunity to grab the Reachable Universe (edit: /expand through the cosmos). (at least, that's my interpretation)

Neat! This page has more works by the same artist.

Part of why I like this one is that I was confused by some of it, and did some research, and thus learned that the big hazy blue/white thing isn't like... a rocket's glow from near and close to the camera, but rather it is a wispy but vast object that "exists out there"!

It is the Phoebe Ring, which was predicted to exist by Steven Soter in 1974 and first observed in 2009. It is made from the ejecta dust of Phoebe which formed far from the sun, probably had water on it while it was radioactively hot, and only later was captured by Saturn in the inner system.

The map that blocks the territory 

I've looked at this across multiple days but only now realised what was happening.

This was the version I had saved on my computer, but we actually have a more complete map now. I love this image both by what it represents:

• Exploring a new world
• Alien geology
• Cool maps
• Including a sense of process (I don't actually know anything about how this image put together, but just looking at it, I'm nearly certain we're looking at a map composited orbits that Cassini took over the source of the planet - like a scanner!)

And from a purely aesthetic perspective:

• Really simple, strongly contrasting, powerful colors
• Clean geometry along with the chaotic and organic

What actually is the rationalist significance of this? It looks dope.

The true patronus was discovered (possibly rediscovered) by Harry Potter, when he finally understood that Dementors represent Death incarnate. His empathetic desire to protect all of humanity from the pain of that loss allowed him to not just drive away the fear of Death, but to conquer Death itself. This caused his Patronus to evolve into its true form; his Patronus took on the shape of an androgynous human. In this form, the Patronus gains additional abilities, including the ability to destroy Dementors and block the "unblockable" curse, Avada Kedavra.

(source: https://hpmor.fandom.com/wiki/Expecto_Patronum)

I chose this photograph because it displays one of the most elegant watch movements ever made. Within this movement there is a perpetual calendar complication. 

A perpetual calendar complication is a calendar feature within a watch that accounts for both short months and leap years. If you own a watch with a perpetual calendar complication, it would only have to be adjusted once every 100 years. 

I've recently gained a better appreciation for how astonishingly good this work is at linear perspective, which had only come about in European art in the prior century. Many things about this painting are good (and some bad to my eye, like the messy color scheme) but those hexagonal details on the curved arches in perspective is 100% Raphael showing off.

An aside, but linear perspective is the most rational part of art, in the older philosophical sense of rational; it's pretty much the only major part of classical art which descends from first principles rather than having an empirical basis.

This depicts a community of scholarship.

Are the books that are visible in this picture actual parts of the library's catalogue, intended to be available for reading or borrowing, or are they just there for aesthetics?

(It seems like it must be the latter, for at least some of them.)

Illustration from Michael Haddad for Wired. It was originally commissioned for an article about biohackers, but I find that it captures the spirit of agency and self-improvement that is well-aligned with some of rationalist values. 

I feel like this one expresses love and the yearning to bring all that is Good and Right out beyond earth. 

Also Solstice is often celebrated in a planetarium. 

This might be cool but I don't see how it's beautiful.

There are more artistic photos of glowing plants around, but this is a relatively early one. Also relevant: biologists have image competitions.

I find this a fascinating choice because of how not-rationalist Dr. Manhattan is for much of the novel.

A panel from Watchmen which particularly resonated with me.

From Wikipedia, "Vostok was a family of rockets derived from the Soviet R-7 Semyorka ICBM and was designed for the human spaceflight programme. This family of rockets launched the first artificial satellite and the first crewed spacecraft in human history. It was a subset of the R-7 family of rockets."

I chose this picture both because I find its composition to be aesthetically striking, and for its portrayal of Piotr Wozniack, in deep thought and ready to jog (an activity which I personally find conducive to great thinking), someone who represents many of the traits I appreciate in a rationalist mind:

Wozniack wanted to learn as much as possible, as efficiently as possible, and ran into fundamental limitations with the capabilities of the human mind, without access to any technology that could help him overcome the barriers he faced. So he did the only reasonable thing: he ran experiments on himself, recording how effective different methods of learning were; he read and learned as much as he could about the psychology of learning to find hints as to how to solve his problem; and once he finally figured out a way to dramatically increase the efficiency of his learning, he gained access to a computer (by means that were borderline illegal in then-Communist Poland) to actually implement his solution.

Wozniack's story is the meta-story for the importance of the virtue of scholarship, and thanks to his hard work and ingenuity, there now exists SRS (that is, the underpinnings of software like Anki), a technology that has played a massive role in my life- it allowed me to learn a second language to a high level of proficiency when I was a teenager, and I still interface with the algorithm Piotr wrote on a daily basis (as I know a good number of other LW'ers do) to help me store a large amount of useful information in my head.

(I enjoyed reading this article (which is the source of the picture) on Wozniack, and would recommend it to anyone who is curious about this character)

Is the sea a metaphor for something?

Jan Matejko’s painting ‘Astronomer Copernicus’.

I saw this when it was exhibited at the National Gallery in London. They also exhibited a smaller sketch for the painting, in which Copernicus has a telescope at his feet. Someone must have seen the sketch and pointed out to Matejko that the telescope had not been invented in Copernicus' time, as he took it out of the final painting.

I hesitated a little on whether to post this, given that it has been pointed out that the curvature of a ringworld wouldn't actually be that obvious from the inside, so it's in tension with the spirit of rationality to post a picture that depicts something physically impossible.

Still, after almost posting this, then deleting it, then feeling like I wanted to post it anyway, I decided to just do it. As I feel that it captures a combination of joy and love of life co-existing  with, and made possible by, science and rationality.

Perhaps not the most beautiful piece of art independent of it's relation to rationality, but I'm a sucker for anything HPMOR. Also check out HPMOR Fan Art.

I recommend the music as well as want to show the picture. 

Especially at 1:47:47 there is a piece starting that makes me cry every single time for the perfect coming together of ephemeral beauty and unstoppable determination.

I find that fitting, just like I find the look in her eyes fitting.

(Edit): This is no image that "describes" rationality and I know it. I find the emotional tone excellently encapsulates the "striving to be better", holding yourself to the highest standard and the like.
At the same time, listening to this it puts me, at least, in a very good mental state for being structured, focused and all the other good things, so I that was how I thought it's relevant. (most of it, that is. not when I'm bawling, obviously^^)
Just to explain ;)

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