Ode To Flower

I have a friend who’s an artist, and has sometimes taken a view which 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 says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is... ...but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, although I might not be as quite refined and aesthetic 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. Not just beauty at this dimensions, but also the beauty at smaller dimensions. I could imagine the cells in there, also the processes, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. 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: Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science only adds to the excitement,the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts....