- Melllvar ( @charonn0@startrek.website ) English30•8 months ago
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, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may 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 it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s 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 don’t understand how it subtracts.
-Richard Feynman
- Natanael ( @Natanael@slrpnk.net ) English8•8 months ago
Art and science are two sides of the same coin. You cannot be a good scientist if you are not a bit of an artist.
- Crul ( @Crul@lemm.ee ) English22•8 months ago
Hover text:
Honestly geometry’s pretty dicey, as are numbers larger than 1.
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- lowleveldata ( @lowleveldata@programming.dev ) English10•8 months ago
Solving too many mysteries is not a complaint I have for the scientists… Not having free energy yet is
- Pons_Aelius ( @Pons_Aelius@kbin.social ) 22•8 months ago
Not having free energy yet is
Have you not noticed the bright ball of gas that lights up the sky during the day?
It bathes the earth in free energy.
- IWantToFuckSpez ( @IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social ) 9•8 months ago
Nothing is free. Eventually Huītzilōpōchtli will consume the Earth to settle the debt we own him.
- Pons_Aelius ( @Pons_Aelius@kbin.social ) 5•8 months ago
Based on current predictions that will happen in about 3.5 billion years.
So I think we will be fine.
- Hexagon ( @Hexagon@feddit.it ) English3•8 months ago
Only for the next 5 billion years! And then what???
- Pons_Aelius ( @Pons_Aelius@kbin.social ) 4•8 months ago
If we haven’t made it off earth by then, well we are shit out of luck.
- TheOakTree ( @TheOakTree@beehaw.org ) English2•8 months ago
I wonder how much sunlight we can convert into stored energy until we are non-trivially detracting from the amount of energy that reaches the earth’s surface.
It’s probably an absurd proportion of solar panel coverage.
- Pons_Aelius ( @Pons_Aelius@kbin.social ) 2•8 months ago
Surface area of the earth: 510,064,472 km²
So at any moment ~255…000.000 km² of the earth is hit with solar radiation. I think we have a while before it becomes an issue.
- bingbong ( @bingbong@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English2•8 months ago
until we are non-trivially detracting from the amount of energy that reaches the earth’s surface.
I think I just found the solution to climate change boys 😎
- TonyTonyChopper ( @TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz ) English7•8 months ago
nothing can be free in a capitalist society
unless you mean perpetual motion/magic energy in which case that was solved hundreds of years ago. It can’t be done
- Queen HawlSera ( @HawlSera@lemm.ee ) English5•8 months ago
Can I has an afterlife?
- photonic_sorcerer ( @photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English5•8 months ago
No. Go make your own.
- Queen HawlSera ( @HawlSera@lemm.ee ) English2•8 months ago
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- MonkeMischief ( @MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ) English4•8 months ago
I feel like this comic exists as a bit of catharsis for the scientific folks, but I gotta say I appreciated the perspective as someone who’s struggled with this, philosophically.
I feel like “pop science” in particular just tries to say “Believe our experts. We figured out the right answer. What people thought for centuries was vast and full of wonder is in fact a gray room, and opinions to the contrary are uneducated and misinformed. Your artistic renderings and sci-fi is wrong.”
That smugness can be seen as trying to eliminate wonder and solve the joy out of things to flaunt one’s own intelligence…which seems to be rewarded heavily by our culture.
For those of us who didn’t get the opportunity for university, I wish the wonderous parts of science were more exposed.
Sadly it’s really hard to find that stuff among mountains of clickbait telling you they used the super collider to build a DOOM-esque wormhole to Hell. Lmao
- pinkdrunkenelephants ( @pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe ) English4•8 months ago
Science is a candle in the dark, it just exposes all of the cool shit to explore in the room that were hidden in the black.