More Than Skin Deep
Posted in Weird Science on May 2nd, 2007 by JennyThere’s beauty all around us; blossoming trees, the night sky flashing with lightening, or a loved ones face. When you stop and look around it is easy to be overcome with reverence at just what a tiny blip we are in the universe. The beauty in front of us is just a beginning. The deeper we look the more we see; the detail on a butterfly’s wing or the glimmer in another’s eye. Look even closer and find that flaws (our own included) not only have an inherent beauty but are perhaps the source of much of it. Nowhere is it easier to see just how deep beauty is and how fundamentally flaws add to it, than at the molecular level.
One of my absolute favorite sites is the Molecular Expressions Photo Gallery. Molecular biophysicist Michael Davidson photographs all kinds of molecules – from brains to beer and everything in between. His photos are incredible and humbling, showing a hidden world of mystery, beauty and complexity. As one writer noted when describing Davidson’s photographs, “In a touch of poetic justice, it’s the defects that reveal the most striking designs and patterns.” Davidson himself muses that “A flawless diamond would just look like a mirror under the microscope.” Seriously, check this site out! There are dozens of galleries to view but here are a few of my favorites:
- Beer;
- Vegetables; and
- Amino Acids.
In the late 1990’s he became interested in the underworld of computer technologists creating microscopic art on microchips. Strange, but true. These pieces of art have snuck their way into many of our computers and electronics. Some of my favorites are:
- The Buffalo Chip;
- The Norse God Thor (remember him from the corn post? He’s the god who married Sif, the corn goddess); and
- Starship USS Enterprise.
I’m not the only one interested in his work. In fact, Davidson sells these photos on a myriad of items and reinvests most of the proceeds into lab equipment at Florida State University and science education. And a lot of money it is, in the 1990’s over $1.5 million from necktie sales alone.
This beauty and complexity of his photos beg countless questions; questions scientists and spiritualist will probably argue for years. But me, that’s not my concern. I stand in awe of the beauty – albeit unexplainable, unknowable and yet, perfect in all its flaws. I hope you can keep beauty on a molecular level in mind when cataloging your “flaws”, they might just be the door to your greatest beauty.
Related Posts:
Dealing with the Hand You Were Dealt
What is Attractive?
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:10 pm
This reminds me of a quote from Richard Feynman:
A poet once said “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imaginations adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secret of the universe’s age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals are there in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:06 am
[…] We perceive beauty in many ways, and in many things. The most common is seeing the beauty in another person whom we love. We might also consider a particular piece of music beautiful, or the smell of a flower garden in full bloom, or the feel of silk against our skin, or the complex and interesting flavours of an unusual dish. As mentioned in my previous post on the topic, our perception affect what we consider beautiful, and it’s every one of our senses that contribute to our perception. And as Jenny just pointed out, even when our naked senses aren’t enough we can enhance them to perceive an even deeper level of beauty than we previously thought existed. […]
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:35 am
What a fitting quote, thanks Mark.
PS. If you happen to check back we are trying to get the RSS Comment feed figured out, we’re learning as we go…
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Here’s something similar: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11775
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 pm
PS: I’m still learning some things too. It’s fun
May 4th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
You find really cool articles!
May 6th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Very interesting article, I’m intrigued with some of the electron microcopic images. The incredible definition, just leads one to think about how complex our world is and how little we know about our surrondings. I often wonder if our world (earth) when condidering it is part of a much larger universe is similiar to one diatom shown by the electron microcope. If were on the diatom looking out could we comprehend what we would see?
May 7th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Dale, that’s an excellent point. Imagine if we could increase our lens and view the entire solar system. Would we even recognize it? Would we miss the beauty we can see from our current vantage point? Would the new view give us a better perspective? We seem to be very stuck viewing the beauty of things we understand or things that look how we always perceive them to look. This leads me to wonder what other beauties we are missing everyday because we don’t know where to look, don’t know how or fail to look all together.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Dale and Erin,
It’s easy to get lost in, huh?
Dale,
Thanks for reading! (and commenting).
July 13th, 2007 at 7:11 am
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