My uncle, Richard Feynman, used to say this a lot:
"I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view that 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'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 he sees is available to other people, and to me. Although I may not be as aesthetically refined 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 can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions in there, which also have a beauty. There's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter. There's beauty at smaller dimensions - the inner structure. Also, the processes: The fact that the color of the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting: It means the insects can see the color! It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in lower forms? All kinds of interesting questions that only add to the excitement and the mystery and the awe of a flower! "
I saw something today that made me think of all of this, but before I show you what it was, I must ask you to consider the beauty of the Browneyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba) . . .
. . . a flower that always reminds me of my sister, another beautiful Browneyed Susan. But forget her for a moment (sorry, Sis.) Keep thinking of that flower, if you can, while thinking about this: Uncle Richard also introduced the world to nanotechnology in a speech he gave in December of 1959. See the connection?
No, probably not.
Well, take a look at this:
See what I mean? The orange photograph - more accurately a "photomicrograph" - was taken by Ghim Wei Ho, a Ph.D. student of nanotechnology at Cambridge. It shows "a 3-D nanostructure grown by controlled nucleation of silicon carbide nanowires on Gallium catalyst particles." If, for some reason, you want to know what that actually means, there's an explanation here. But why bother? I mean, why take it all apart and make it all dull? ;-)
I doubt that even Uncle Richard could have imagined that flowers not only contain beauty in many dimensions (so to speak) but exist in many dimensions! On the other hand, I doubt that he would have been surprised.
Jesus, I miss my Uncle Richard! And in this, I gather, I'm not entirely alone.
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Fine print: The photomicrograph is ©Ghim Wei Ho and Prof. Mark Welland, Nanostructure Center, University of Cambridge. The Browneyed Susans are © Me - all rights protected by my platoon of sleazy lawyers.
