so pure love, with no strings attached, can’t exist out there. What I feel for Sam is just another case of an animal looking after its DNA.
I told him a bit about this book and what his answer meant for my book’s conclusion, that my love for Sam was really nothingspecial. Sometimes science doesn’t give you the answer you were hoping for.
Gerry laughed for a second, then without pausing, told me that he wholeheartedly disagreed.
“Just because you understand the mechanism doesn’t make it imaginary. You just identified where it came from. How does that make it any less authentic? Have you ever heard Feynman talk about a flower?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, it’s the same thing.”
I knew the Feynman thing Gerry was talking about quite well. I’d tried to use it in conversations about the value of science many times. It comes from a slightly grainy filmed interview with the brilliant Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman, who, smiling as he always seemed to be, talks about the aesthetics of science. I An artist friend, he says, has argued that a scientist can’t appreciate a flower because he takes it all apart until it becomes dull. Feynman, in his disarming New York City accent, says,
I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more . . . 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 [by] 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.
Feynman’s view is the opposite of “Ignorance is bliss.” To him, every new understanding you have about something makes it more mysterious and wonderful. To Feynman, the questions we ask about a flower are wonderful, but there’s no reason to fear that we’ll lose that wonder if the questions are answered, because every time you learn something new, you’re rewarded with new, deeper mysteries that engage you even more. Scientists don’t get bored after learning about the world. They just keep digging deeper. And the deeper they dig, the more wonderful the mysteries get.
I thought back to the first time I saw those vampire bats—how seeing their faces was enriched by all the scientific facts I’d read about them. So why, then, was I having the opposite reaction to information about fatherly love? Why was knowing about evolution making me think my love for Sam was less beautiful instead of more beautiful? Gerry’s argument was to consider Feynman’s ode to a flower as advice to a father. The fact that I understand the evolutionary origins of love should not have to “subtract” from its beauty. Knowing that my love for Sam comes from millions of years of evolution, if anything, should make that love more real.
One of the things I’ve loved most about my life in science has been the quality of the friends I’ve made. It’s wonderful to spend time with smart people who challenge you and force you to question your own beliefs. I’d been plowing through scientific papers,weaving their stories together for this book, and been unable to resolve this crisis about Sam. But Gerry could instantly see the flawed assumption my crisis was based upon. Maybe he’d spent time thinking about this very problem for his research, or maybe he just understood my situation better because he’s not a dad, so he wasn’t caught up in it. Either way, I’d assumed that a father’s love could not be pure and real if it had been built by the selfish process of biological
I told him a bit about this book and what his answer meant for my book’s conclusion, that my love for Sam was really nothingspecial. Sometimes science doesn’t give you the answer you were hoping for.
Gerry laughed for a second, then without pausing, told me that he wholeheartedly disagreed.
“Just because you understand the mechanism doesn’t make it imaginary. You just identified where it came from. How does that make it any less authentic? Have you ever heard Feynman talk about a flower?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, it’s the same thing.”
I knew the Feynman thing Gerry was talking about quite well. I’d tried to use it in conversations about the value of science many times. It comes from a slightly grainy filmed interview with the brilliant Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman, who, smiling as he always seemed to be, talks about the aesthetics of science. I An artist friend, he says, has argued that a scientist can’t appreciate a flower because he takes it all apart until it becomes dull. Feynman, in his disarming New York City accent, says,
I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more . . . 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 [by] 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.
Feynman’s view is the opposite of “Ignorance is bliss.” To him, every new understanding you have about something makes it more mysterious and wonderful. To Feynman, the questions we ask about a flower are wonderful, but there’s no reason to fear that we’ll lose that wonder if the questions are answered, because every time you learn something new, you’re rewarded with new, deeper mysteries that engage you even more. Scientists don’t get bored after learning about the world. They just keep digging deeper. And the deeper they dig, the more wonderful the mysteries get.
I thought back to the first time I saw those vampire bats—how seeing their faces was enriched by all the scientific facts I’d read about them. So why, then, was I having the opposite reaction to information about fatherly love? Why was knowing about evolution making me think my love for Sam was less beautiful instead of more beautiful? Gerry’s argument was to consider Feynman’s ode to a flower as advice to a father. The fact that I understand the evolutionary origins of love should not have to “subtract” from its beauty. Knowing that my love for Sam comes from millions of years of evolution, if anything, should make that love more real.
One of the things I’ve loved most about my life in science has been the quality of the friends I’ve made. It’s wonderful to spend time with smart people who challenge you and force you to question your own beliefs. I’d been plowing through scientific papers,weaving their stories together for this book, and been unable to resolve this crisis about Sam. But Gerry could instantly see the flawed assumption my crisis was based upon. Maybe he’d spent time thinking about this very problem for his research, or maybe he just understood my situation better because he’s not a dad, so he wasn’t caught up in it. Either way, I’d assumed that a father’s love could not be pure and real if it had been built by the selfish process of biological
Similar Books
