This is my essay for my University of Michigan Application.  I 'd forgotten just how it felt to crash-write something like that, so I'm not sure if it's any good or not.  But oh well, here goes nothing:

PROMPT Some writers suggest that by tradition, science is concerned with truth while art is concerned with beauty.  How might these two endeavors be the same?  How might they be irreconcilably different?

In my past experience, two concepts have always been apparent in all that I have observed: form and essence.  Form by its very nature is concerned with the inner workings of the device: how it is put together, how those parts work together to create a working device.  Science by virtue of its own empiricism is the study of form.  With the pursuit of form comes the pursuit of truth, as buried inside the more complex forms are simpler forms which ultimately contain the most basic forms, which we will take as the elementary truth of that object.

Essence, however, is concerned only with why the object or device is put together.  Every creation, be it by God or Man, possesses a purpose.  The purpose does not concern itself with how, only why.  The “Why” makes for a “How.”  Art, in its very manner of expression is a prime example of this.  The medium for art can change, but the same basic essence will still be there.  Ultimately, the common thread between all works of art is the fact that they were designed with a purpose, expressed in the provided medium, and made beautiful by conscious reference as such.

It appears that the two components, form and essence, are diametrically opposed.  Form has structure but no purpose.  Essence has purpose but no structure.  However, in the real world, the two are inseparable components of all things physical and metaphysical.  Take for example, a computer.  If you take the computer apart and analyze each of the components individually, you will discover that they are organized and presented in a form and arranged in a structure.  They are connected in a certain way and trigger in a certain sequence to get something done.  But if you had no idea why it was supposed to do that, what value would it have been to you?  The computer was designed with a purpose in mind (most can multi-task, but for the sake of brevity I will keep it to one: word processing): to allow you to type, organize, and print a report.  Without the circuitry (the form), the purpose cannot be realized.  But without the purpose (the intelligent design that went into the purpose), the circuitry has no meaning.  It becomes junk, useless to the last.

It is often said that truth is beautiful.  But perhaps it is not so much beautiful as elegant.  Everything fits and everything works but it is dead.  It has no soul.  Dreams have soul.  They show visions of magnificent works and endless possibilities but they have no form.  They cannot be executed without a willing architect.  Thus they are locked away in their own realm to die.  In this, both Truth and Beauty– Form and Essence– coexist to form reality as we know it.  The search for Truth (science) and the search for Beauty (art), is therefore one and the same: the search for Life.