The article presents the main functions of aesthetic values (beauty, simplicity, symmetry) in the process of formulating, evaluating and accepting scientific theories in the work of physicist: 1) they motivate to undertake scientific research; (2) have a heuristic role which enables the direction of the search for a new theory to be selected; (3) are a criterion for choosing between empirically equivalent theories in the absence of empirical evidences and (4) sometimes constitute an epistemological obstacle. The basic thesis of the work is that aesthetic values, in addition to positive functions, also play a negative role in science, hindering the acceptance of new theories or leading to inefficient research. Too much weight on the aesthetic side of theory can pose a threat to the objectivity of scientific cognition.

Philosophers are motivated to do research concerning pattern recognition because of wide range of its applications. One of the pathfi nders of research in that area was Satosi Watanabe, who has been frequently commented in the literature concerning this subject. The rule of decrease in entropy and the rule of simplicity are described in the context of pattern recognition. Although the concept of entropy had been initially used in the area of thermodynamics, it could be adopted also in the fi eld of pattern recognition. The concept of entropy should be then suitable transformed. A few of examples of the entropy concept application and the relationship between entropy and simplicity are discussed in the article. Simplicity considered by Watanabe should be treated mainly as polynomial curve simplicity, however the issue is described in the wider context.

Bogusław Wolniewicz’s book Things and facts, although it is essentially devoted to the interpretation of the Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, also has a substantive layer in which Wolniewicz raises very important problems in the fields of methodology, semiotics and metaphysics, such as: (a) the problem of clarity of philosophical texts and its relation to simplicity and brevity, as well as to thoroughness and suggestiveness; (b) the problem of semantic correlation types; (c) the problem of analysis, interpretation and definition; (d) the problems of modality, negative facts, absolute monism and coherentionism; (e) the problem of abstraction and moral-praxeological antinomy. The author of the paper reconstructs Wolniewicz’s views on these matters.