IMS_Blog

Because I forget stuff. Part of norcimo.com

Note: It appears you must have reached this page by a deep level URL. In general this site is currently down and unmaintained. See here

About This Post

Originally posted September 9 2007 at 18:09 under Physics. 2 Comments. Trackbacks Disabled. Last modified: 16 October 2007 at 21:26

Osculating Science

This post was inspired by a Science Musings post, it’s just some very quick thoughts I had in response (despite it’s inspiration, and the fact this derives from it, I’m quite reluctant to link to that post as its most lyrical passages seem to have been lifted stratight from this Musings per jasmine post :-/ As Tom from Science Musings points out in the comments, it’s actually the other way around, sort of…). Anyway, my point was supposed to be that science, and the knowledge of the way the world works it gives, doesn’t necessarily distract from the beauty of the world. Yes, in the context of a kiss it’s not particularly important. The thing is that people often assume scientists can’t realise that. More, they assume that because we might understand the molecular structure of that honey that it somehow takes away from the fact that it tastes damn delicious. This, when you stop to think for a moment, is clearly ridiculous. Scientists like honey, and enjoy kissing as much as anyone. We however get more, for we get to see the beauty of those molecules, the connections between the glory of nature. Just because we have some idea how the rainbow is formed doesn’t make it any less pretty—it makes it greater, for we can ponder, should we choose, how such an enchanting thing can come from photons twinkling through some raindrops.

I recommend you check out the incomparable Richard Feynman on this point, who waxed so much more wonderfully than I on just that subject, somewhere I can’t be bothered to look up right now. Mmm, kiss…

Comments (2):

1

FYI - The original author of the piece was in fact Chet Raymo, published in the Boston Globe many years ago. He subsequently reused it on his blog, unaware until recently that it had been plagiarized on the Jasmine blog. Jasmine has now removed the unattributed material.

Made by Tom on Oct 16, 2007 at 21:16

2

Thanks for the clarification Tom, and sorry for getting it wrong!

Made by Ian Scott on Oct 16, 2007 at 21:30

Post a comment

Name and email address are required. Email address is never shown. If you enter a URL your name will be linked to it (this and other links will have the rel attribute set to contain nofollow). Markup allowed: <a href="" title="" rel=""> <em> <strong> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <p> <br />. Anything else is stripped; please be valid. Single linebreaks automatically convert to <br />, double to <p>'s. Additionally anything that looks like a bare URL should get automagically linked. Many acronyms and abbreviations are also automagically handled.

Please note this blog's comment policy

Trackbacks (0):

Trackback URL: http://www.norcimo.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/770

Advanced...

This Crazy Fool

Who:
Dr Ian Scott
Where:
Croydon (and Gateshead), United Kingdom
Contact:
ian@norcimo.com
What:
Bullding Services Engineer (EngDesign), PhD in Physics (University of York), football fanatic (Newcastle United), open source enthusiast (mainly Mozilla)

More about me [Disclaimer]

You may subscribe to IMS_Blog using the RSS Feed, the Atom Feed or by email.

Creative Commons License

From September 09 Other Years

© Ian Scott. Powered by Movable Type 3.2. This blog uses valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and valid CSS. All times are local UK time. For further details see the IMS_Blog about page.. All my feeds in one.