The late Richard Feynman participated in the Manhattan Project, won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics, and put his natural irreverence to good use as a best-selling author who epitomized the citizen scientist. This entry is taken from a collection of his short works, entitled The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:
"I have a friend who's an artist and he's 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, I think. And he says - "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, 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; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.
At the same time, I can see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, 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 it is aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds; I don't understand how it subtracts."
Have you had an experience that lets you relate to Feynman's point? And on a different topic, how does Feynman's point relate to this Saturday's theme zen poem?
And it turns out that many flowers have UV patterns we can't see at all. E.g., some "plain" flowers have dramatic spikes or wedges of colours pointing to where the nectar is in UV light. Only a scientist with the right goggles can see those! LOL
Yeah, I saw an exhibit at the Smithsonian once, during a trip to D.C. You'd press the button, kill the fluorescent, and turn on the UV light... and the difference was striking. What you see in one light isn't at all the same sometimes as what you see in the other.
Flowers... the original politicians.
It's complicated. We don't all see the same thing. Arguably, none of us see the same thing. The "extra" things that Feynman sees, his associations from study of the sciences, are analogous to the associations of an expert in a different domain, such as a visual artist. A poet may have yet another set of associations, a farmer still another set. A synesthete might hear the colors and taste the shape.
We really shouldn't makes assumptions about the quality or depth of another's experiences. We can't know their experiences from their behavior. We know a bit more about those who make an effort to communicate their experiences and observations, but lack of communication does not necessarily mean lack of affect. I have no art - can't speak, write, paint, sing or dance my feelings. Still, I have them.
lol, we have people coming to gnxp all the time to pity us because we dull eggheads cannot appreciate the "artistic beauty" all around us. Well, I pity them. They can't ever experience the blast of endorphins I get from seeing causality in a biological process, or solving a really hairy equation.
And here is what gives me the greatest pleasure--From Stephenson's Cryptonomicon --
Feynman is right-- those of us that are "scient" can know a whole separate dimension of form and function and causality, inaccessible to most. It is both intensly beautiful and and intensely pleasurable to exist there.
Not surprisingly, I agree wholeheartedly with Feynman. Moreover, I can't help but feel that there's a well of bad philosophy behind the attitude of people like his artistic friend. Not only do peope like that have a totally ignorant idea of what science is really about, but they almost have a disdain for knowledge. I see a lot of Romanticism there -- the aesthetic experience is everything, rationality is dismal and in opposition to "really living", scientific knowledge is contemptible and inhuman, etc. If we take that to its logical conclusions we should have never gone beyond painting on cave walls.
But they've got it utterly backward: scientific discovery is the most thrilling and quintessentially human activity we can take part in. We love figuring things out. Who hasn't gotten that thrill of solving a problem, when suddenly something makes sense and just "clicks" inside your brain? And there will always be things we don't understand and thus more problems for us to try to solve. Every new discovery leads to more questions, so there's no danger of the universe running out of mystery any time soon.
Artists are often shallow creatures, for all their arrogance and superiority about aesthetics and sensibility. One only has to listen to most artists talk politics to know this - they can be blinkered and tunnel visioned in so many important ways. (I think Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote entertainly about artists and politics and why we shouldn't necessarily listen to them a year or so ago).
Whenever a self-proclaimed artist tells me I can't possibly appreciate something as well as they do (this seems to be a feature of those enamoured of obscurity, those in the avant-garde, and worshippers of modernism in general) I tend to reach for my revolver. This is very different, of course, than being walked through, say, a close reading of a poem by a gifted teacher, or listening to a fine art historian discuss Bruegel. It is the assumption that one couldn't possibly understand something because one comes from say, a different discipline or culture, that is so offensive here. Not to mention that the artist must have been pretty dim to say such a preposterous thing to Richard Feynman, and well deserves his comeuppence.
For sure, it will be nice, if the lower forms can experience aesthetic feelings, but science has proved that it is impossible. So, humans must be happy to have such a wonderful talent - the feeling of the beauty. Unfortunately, we begin to forget about in everyday vanity.
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