In 1981, Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was interviewed by the BBC. He told this story of his disagreement with an artist about who can better appreciate the beauty of a flower - artists or scientists:
I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty.
I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that 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 might 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 centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes.
The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. 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 science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts. [Click here for Poster]
If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we are going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you can easily become disillusioned and then look for some mystic answer to these problems.
People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I am not. I am just looking to find out more about the world. And if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything so be it.
That would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we just sick and tired of looking at the layers then that’s the way it is! But whatever way it comes out its nature, it’s there, and she’s going to come out the way she is. And therefore when we go to investigate we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we are trying to do except to find out more about it.
You see, one thing is I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and then many things I don’t know anything about… But I don’t have to know an answer, I don’t have to… I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things...
What do you think of when you see a flower? What do you observe? What do you feel? What do you understand? Leave your thoughts in the Comment box.
Return to Main Menu
Comments
Post a Comment