Richard Feynman – Ode To A Flower is an animationΒ created by Fraser Davidson of Cub Studio. (Reminder: Please don’t hit people you disagree with.) The quote, by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, was given in 1981 during the CalTech professor’s BBC interview for Horizon: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
Read the full quote and find the full interview clip below:Β
“I have a friend whoβs an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I donβt agree with very well. Heβll hold up a flower and say βlook how beautiful it is,β and Iβll agree. Then he says βI as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,β and I think that heβs 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.”
“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 itβs not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; thereβs 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 donβt understand how it subtracts.”
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via Mental Floss.
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