The beauty of science makes one weepy

I saw this photo (Milky Way over the Wood Island cottage) in the website of our friend, Steve.  It comes with the following comment.

“Sometimes the beauty and scale of the Cosmos just makes me choke up and get weepy ... (this feeling is accentuated by an appreciation of the physics behind it all ... which is a different kind of beauty)”

This reminds me of an article (The making of a scientist) by Richard Feynman, collected in the book of Classic Feynman.  The following three italic paragraphs are the excerpts.

I have a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with.  He’ll hold up a flower and say, “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree.  But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is.  But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.”  I think 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.  But at the same time, I see much more in the flower than he sees.  I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty.  There’s beauty not just at the dimension of one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.

There are the complicated actions of the cells, and other processes.  The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors.  That adds a question: does the aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a 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.

And Feynman did even touch the issue of fragrance, which, I am sure, also evolves over the age.  There is an article (Why do flowers have scent?) on the 4/18/2005 issue of Scientific American.  Like colors of flowers, the distinct scent of certain flowers attracts their pollinators and the nectar and/or pollen is their rewards.

Steve had a good fortune to be able to sit in Feynman’s classroom when he was giving that famous “Feynman’s Lectures on Physics” in early 1960s.  Like teacher; like student!