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  • I have a friend who is 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. And he says you see as an artist I 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,

  • but 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, which also have a beauty.

  • I mean, it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there's also beauty at smaller dimensions.

  • The inner structure, also the processes, the fact that the colors and 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: Is this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms that... why is it aesthetic...

  • all kinds of interesting questions which with 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.

  • If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are,

  • where we are going, what the meaning of the universe is, and so on, then I think you could easily become the

  • disillusioned and look for some mystic answer to these problems. How a scientist can take a mystic answer,

  • I don't know, the whole spirit is to understand... Well, never mind that, I mean I don't understand that.

  • But anyhow, if you think of it, the way I think of it is that we are exploring, we're trying to find out

  • as much as we can about the world.

  • People say to me "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?"

  • No I'm not, I'm just looking to find out more about the world, and if it turns out there is a simple

  • ultimate law that explains everything, so be it.

  • That would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers,

  • and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is.

  • But whatever way it comes out, nature is there and she's going to come out the way she is.

  • Therefore, when we go to investigate it, we shouldn't pre-decide what it is we're trying to do

  • except to find out more about it.

  • You see, one thing is: I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing.

  • I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

  • I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty

  • about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything,

  • and there are many things I don't know anything about.

  • But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things.

  • By being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is

  • as far as I could tell possible. It doesn't frighten me.

  • And so altogether I can't believe the special stories

  • that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be

  • too simple, too local, to provincial. The earth, he came to the earth!

  • One of the aspects of god came to the earth, mind you.

  • And look at what's out there, it isn't in proportion.

  • Anyway, its no use arguing, I can't argue it. I'm just trying

  • to tell you: with the scientific view, with my father's view that we should look to see what's true and what

  • may not be true. Once you start doubting, which to me is a very fundamental part of my soul, is to doubt,

  • and to ask. When you doubt and ask, it gets a little harder to believe.

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  • Credits

  • Social media created by Reid Gower.

I have a friend who is an artist, and has sometimes

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