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[-] charonn0@startrek.website 42 points 1 year ago

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 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 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.

-Richard Feynman

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 11 points 1 year ago

Art and science are two sides of the same coin. You cannot be a good scientist if you are not a bit of an artist.

https://edgy.app/where-art-and-science-intersect

[-] Trail@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Well said. He sounds like a smart fellow.

[-] IndefiniteBen@leminal.space 2 points 1 year ago

Indeed, he seems like a fine man.

this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
472 points (96.8% liked)

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