Nick's blog

Some I've taken recently, click images to enlarge:

"I have a friend who is an artist, and he has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. If you hold up a flower and say 'Look how beautiful it is' and I'll agree, I think [it is too]. And you can look in his eyes and see how honest he is, 'But you as a scientist always take this all apart and it becomes this dull thing.' And I think that he is kinda, nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and me too. I believe, though I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, that I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complex actions inside which ALSO have a beauty. I mean, its not just beauty at THIS dimension, this one centimeter; there's also beauty at a smaller diminsion. The inner structure, also the processes, the fact that colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollenate it...is interesting to me. It means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also occur in lower forms? WHY is it aesthetic? All sorts of interesting questions that the science knowledge only ADDS to... the excitement, mystery, and awe of a flower. It only adds, I don't understand how it subtracts."
--R.P. Feynman, Nobel physics laureate