[HN Gopher] Two Views of a River - Twain
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Two Views of a River - Twain
Author : tomasreimers
Score : 14 points
Date : 2023-11-25 00:20 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thoughtco.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thoughtco.com)
| mlhpdx wrote:
| One of my favorites.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Feynman rebuts:
|
| > 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.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It is not a similar situation. Feynman did not have to
| understand the flower in order to survive it.
| whartung wrote:
| To be honest:
|
| > But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could
| never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty,
| the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!
|
| This is something that, a little, keeps me from learning more
| about music. I love the magic of music, it's a mystery to me. How
| the writers, composers, performers manage to, by design or no,
| affect me the way that it can.
|
| I mean, it's just folks banging or blowing on things. I listen to
| music that's popular with "musicians". I went to a concert once,
| and while waiting to get inside, someone asked out loud "Who here
| is not a musician?" and I seemed to be the only one to raise
| their hand.
|
| I can not say why the music appeals to musicians. Apparently it's
| very technical. Which, means, of course, that those literate in
| the art can appreciate it on that level. But, also, perhaps,
| those literate in the art may not be able to well appreciate
| other styles. "Oh, that's to XXX, it's not YYY".
|
| The point being, as you get more knowledgeable in an art, there's
| a tendency to become more critical. And I guess maybe you'll know
| "why" you're more critical. Where as ignorant me doesn't know why
| I like or don't like something, just that I do.
|
| And I think I'd rather just stay ignorant and enjoy music that I
| do on the face of it, without diving deep into the how or why.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I think computers are that way to me. Others imagine the marvels
| of AI or the world-spanning internet and speak in romantic ways.
| To me, just modems and signalling and database and linear
| regressions.
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