Feynman Foreword
 

So a long time ago I read a quantum book which began with a foreword/preface sort of thing written by Richard Feynman, who was not the author of the book. He was talking about art and beauty in the world, and his main point was that unraveling the mystery of the world around us did not take the beauty from us, but instead opened us to a greater capacity for appreciation of that beauty. At one point he mentions Starry Starry Night, and how it's no less beautiful these days knowing exactly why the stars shine.

Does anyone have the text of this one page essay available, or even know what book/essay I'm talking about?

Thanks, and sorry for not starting another thread on some aspect of religion... though I suppose we could jump off on a tangent and make one if you would like.

~D

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

Thank you for starting a non religion thread. I visit this forum occasionally just for the faint hope that there will be a science or math topic.

I don't know the book that you are talking about, however i remember something similar to that in the book Surely, You're Joking Mr. Feynman.

Wikipedia has a list of his works. Maybe that will help you.

Melch

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

I found the quote I believe.


Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination— stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern— of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent. (Footnote in The Feynman Lectures on Physics)


Melch

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

[ QUOTE ]
I found the quote I believe.


Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination— stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern— of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent. (Footnote in The Feynman Lectures on Physics)


Melch

[/ QUOTE ]

That's it! Thanks.

~D

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

Incidentally, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, Feynman's referencing this (and things like it, of course).

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine--
Unweave a rainbow.
-- John Keats, Lamia, 1820

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

He also said this:

I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s some times 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, I think. And he says, "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And 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. But I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower that he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter: there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure, also the processes.

The fact that the colors in the flower are 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 a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower.

It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

Yeah I remember reading that somewhere too.

Feynman said a lot of neat things.

~D

Re: Feynman Foreword
 

[ QUOTE ]
He also said this:

I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s some times 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, I think. And he says, "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And 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. But I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower that he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter: there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure, also the processes.

The fact that the colors in the flower are 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 a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower.

It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hate to bring a religious bent on this (being an atheist and all), but to give a short response to him, you could say

"You think God is in the details. I see God in the details AND the process. Which of us is more blinkered?"


Oh, and Feynman was indeed a truly great man.