You may or may not know it that this is the first year I plunge into gardening although Katy has been an old hand with a green thumb. Seeing the blooming flowers, Katy marvels at their beauty and glory and feels sorry for me that I cannot appreciate them as much as she does; nothing is further from the truth. Paraphrasing or quoting Richard Feynman, “Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as she is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. But, at the same time, I see much more in the flower than she does. I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty. . .”
Why do scientists love science? I find the answers in Richard Feynman. We appreciate and enjoy things beautiful and he found the beauty in science, which simply put, is to understand how Nature works.
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| summer lush |
Not only can I see the strikingly bright colors of zinnia or geranium, I also marvel at the colorful aerial ballet of the butterflies—a dancing ritual before pollinating mission or nectar feasting. I am curious why Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and Butterfly bush attract butterfly more than others. Like Feynman I wonder “The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insect can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”
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| Melvin Calvin |
Whenever I see how green was my garden, I see the photosynthesis; I see how carbon dioxide is fixed (reduced) to make glucose (sugar); I see how Melvin Calvin figured it out in U.C. Berkeley, unraveling the secret of the first and the most important chemical process of life; I see how Krebs cycle is the reverse of Calvin cycle (Is this an ingenious design of God or He was simply too lazy to design a different and unrelated process?) in that a series of oxidation of glucose is to make energy to sustain us.
This is how I have double pleasure working in the garden; it is a work of the body and the mind.
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