Blog #2 (Tram Dang)

The word beauty is often associated with nature and the arts. Usually, when I think of science, beauty is not the first word that comes to mind. Instead, some other things I associate science with are space, biology, chemistry, and math. Items that have factual and have quantitative elements, while art is often qualitative and decorative.
That said, I do believe that science is, in fact, beautiful. Although science does not emphasize on aesthetic aspects and tend to concentrate on theories and facts, both art and science intersect and help inform each other. Though the term beautiful might be different from a scientist’s perspective than from an artist’s and/or outsider’s perspective. For a scientist, they probably see the beauty in science when all the formula and facts work out perfective, giving them this perfect number or equation that can be solved and prove. While for an artist, they find beauty in science by examining findings from a lens. Not to say that either is wrong, but this is how I picture it. 
Such as at the beginning of time, from as early as the 5th century, the Greek god Hephaestus wrested fire from the Earth’s bowels and used it to smelt metal. While this may be a Greek myth, there is some truth to it. The purest metals like aluminum, silver, and copper come from Earth’s crust. A material like metal help advance technology and civilization that was a product from nature. We were able to bend and wield it to create various items from weapons to decorative art piece, all due to science. Someone discover how to get copper from its ore, and after refining it, was able to create iron and that lead to many other discoveries. Had we not been curious about nature’s beauty, we would be living in a different period and technological advance due to this. 

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Process metal goes through.
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Metals throughout the years.

In the end, it is all about how someone looks at it and their perspective on the matter. Beauty is so abstract, and it can be defined depending on the who you ask. Nature is beautiful and is unpredictable. How are birds able to fly in a specific formation when they migrate? How are flowers able to grow and create a particular pattern every single time? These are questions that nature made us think about and interested someone in figuring out and explain how it works. Through science, we were able to discover that flower grows a certain way through the golden ratio and can understand more able bird’s behavior through Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Because of the beauty of nature, it has influenced science and scientist to want to figure out the theory and mechanics of how it works. 

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Darwins Theory of Evolution.
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Migration of bird patterns.
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Golden ratio in plants.

References:
A Dynamic History Reading 
Where do metals come from? http://www.sda-uk.org/materials/popups/metals/where_do_metals_come_from.htm

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