What is Beauty, Anyway?

Richard Feynman will be among the Nobel Prize winners at the World Science Festival this month. In a way.

I'll be doing a reading of QED, the play about Feynman, and as I get ready to step into his life again, I'm hit by a wave of fondness and nostalgia for this person I never met.

I've been reading his words and listening to his voice once more but this time I have an advantage I didn't have when I played him on Broadway a few years ago. Now, with a couple of clicks, I can find him on YouTube. And, one of his clips, I'm surprised to see, brings a catch to my throat.

Feynman is talking about an artist friend who told him that scientists couldn't appreciate the beauty of a flower the way artists could because the scientist takes the flower apart and makes it dull. Feynman is gentle but he thinks this is nutty. "First of all," he says, "the beauty that he sees is available to other people. And to me too, I believe." You have to see the way Feynman says it. His tone is kind, even humble:

But Feynman also talks about how much more the scientist can see than his friend does -- other things that are also beautiful, like the processes deep inside the flower. I can work up a lather myself about this, as I did one night on the Charlie Rose show with Brian Greene and Paul Nurse.

Take a look:

I believe it works both ways. Just as Feynman the scientist could appreciate the beauty of the artist's flower, the rest of us can also revel in the view science gives us of the inside of the flower.

I didn't always understand this. When I was in high school, I fell under the spell of that crazy idea that if you're interested in the arts you can't be interested in science. I heard the romantic poets' siren songs and didn't know that the beauty they saw in a host of golden daffodils was confined to those flowers' thin exteriors. They never dreamed of the infinity of universes beneath the petals.

That's why I've been devoting myself to the World Science Festival. During each day, scientists will talk in plain language to New Yorkers in 20 venues all over the city, and in the evening musicians, dancers and actors will stage performances that are based on science and after which artists, scientists and audiences will join in stimulating discussions. In halls and theaters and even in parks and street fairs, New York will have a chance to watch beauty bloom.

What is beauty, anyway? It's more than something pleasant looking. If it doesn't stop us in our tracks and make us unable to move for a moment, unable to put into words what's closing off the breath in our throats, then maybe it's pretty, but it probably isn't beauty.

Science, though, is beauty.

And I think the World Science Festival will take our breath away.

Comments

[StealthisBlog]

I never met Dr. Feynman, yet was completely captivated by the PBS special about him and his quest to go to Tannu Tuva. This led me to read his books and books about him. He gave me an understanding of physics and quantum theory that, as a layman, I never imagined I could have.

The scene in the PBS show where he is drumming and singing the praises of orange juice just knock me out man! This was filmed, I believe during the fight against the cancer that eventually took this man with a brain of Einsteinian magnitude from us all too soon. I miss him.

Thank you Mr. Alda for your work and I would love to see you as Dr. Feynman!

[Johnagain]

I'm a scientist and I agree with Alda and drkasmd65, and especially Feynman. The deeper the scientific understanding of an element of nature, whether it be a flower, a bacterium, the immune system, or the generation of galaxies, the more deeply one can see the beauty.

I am biased in this regard, but I see science (the honest and sincere practice of it) as one of the surest ways humanity can be redeemed and safeguarded into the future. It's one of the best things in life, and we should be promoting it as Alda and Green are, and not attacking it as the right wing has been doing lately.

[ArtLiquidBlogspot]

By failing to fail into line, conform to a set of pregiven rules,Asking for something to be withdrawn,before being viewed,sort of fear?

NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE, Number 2

[JimReed]

I think the ultimate beauty from a human perspective would be perfect symmetry, finite and unbounded.

[cktirumalai]

William Wordsworth gave "classic" expression to the romantic view in "Tables Turned": "Our meddling intellect/ Mis-shapes the beauteous form of things:--/ We murder to dissect." Earlier Blake had seen Newton as the embodiment of the Mechanical Mind.
Characteristically Wordsworth felt that Goethe had read more (and, by implication, had more bookish learning) than was good for his poetry. Goethe took a keen interest in science, including botany and the forms created in nature, and brought it to bear on his poetry and drama.
Rather unexpectedly Wordsworth thought that in the future the discoveries of science would enter naturally into poetry and influence its language.

[YEShavesome]

Great work, Alan, I am reminded of Raphael's "School of Athens", depicting a time when science and the arts were taught in harmony. Just as an understanding of science can give one the perspective to understand the layers of beauty in the natural world, the numinous feeling that great art, music and beauty give us can inspire all students of life to learn the scientific, rigorous, method of great scientists.

I see that beauty and understanding in you, old friend, thanks for all you do!

Peace and Blessings, Ken

[jmpurser]

I'm reminded of the word "grok" in Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". Like so many Martian words it can't be completely translated into English (or any earth tongue) of course. But I don't think either the artist or the scientist can grok so much as a blade of grass without seeing something of what the other sees.

[StealthisBlog]

Grokking! Nice. I give you water.

[drkazmd65]

As a scientist,... I have to agree completely Mr. Alda.

I never cease to be amazed at the beauty around me - even in places where 'natural' beauty doesn't seem to be there. While I am able to reduce the world around me into pieces, smaller parts that are equally 'beautiful' in their elegance and interactions - I never cease to wonder at the beauty of the bigger picture either.

Science, and art, are not mutually exclusive. Most thinking scientists have a great appreciation for art and artistic thinking. In fact, to do good science requires abstract thinking and occasionally illogical mental leaps.

There is nothing that I enjoy more than a good glass of wine, after an evenig of theater or live music,...