AES99 The Beauty of a Flower

I have a friend who’s an artist has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well

He’ll hold up a flower and say “Look at how beautiful it is!”

And I’ll agree, but then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful it is, but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes this dull thing”

And I think he’s kind of nutty, first of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe.

Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees.

I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty.

I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimetre. There’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes.

The fact that the colours in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting. It means that insects can see the colour.

It adds a question; does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic?

All kinds of interesting questions which the scientific knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower.

It only adds, I don’t understand how it subtracts.

• Richard Feynman

I think the most valuable trait of knowledge is that it adds perspective. Something that seems so simple from the outside can be remarkable when you study the inner workings, the history, its purpose. The fact that a scientist’s work involves dissecting and explaining complex objects and phenomena doesn’t mean that they take it for granted, or lose sight of the bigger picture. I often see that it’s the scientists who marvel at the beauty of the world, because understanding the unimaginable size of the universe and the unlikely possibility of our existence, adds so much appreciation to the fact that we are here.