Making and breaking symmetries in mind and life

Abstract

Symmetry is a motif featuring in almost all areas of science. Symmetries appear throughout the natural world, making them particularly important in our quest to understand the structure of the world around us. Symmetries and invariances are often first principles pointing to some lawful description of an observation, with explanations being understood as both ‘satisfying’ and potentially useful in their regularity. The sense of aesthetic beauty accompanying such explanations is reminiscent of our understanding of intelligence in terms of the ability to efficiently predict (or compress) data; indeed, identifying and building on symmetry can offer a particularly elegant description of a physical situation. The study of symmetries is so fundamental to mathematics and physics that one might ask where else it proves useful. This theme issue poses the question: what does the study of symmetry, and symmetry breaking, have to offer for the study of life and the mind?