the-beauty-of-science
Explanation
This comic is a multi-panel discussion about whether scientists appreciate beauty more than artists. It begins with someone asking: "Do you think scientists appreciate beauty more than artists?" A character near a "Biology Dept" sign says: "Huh?"
The comic then presents a long monologue (reminiscent of the famous Richard Feynman quote about appreciating the beauty of a flower): "I have a friend who's an artist and sometimes takes 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."
After this, someone responds: "That's the dumbest rant I ever heard." Another person says: "Look, that kind of thing might fly in a physics classroom. Maybe even with some artists. But try it at my dissection table." A zoologist argues: "You think zoologists see extra beauty because they also know about the worms living in a dead possum? But know about the liqueified guts of a tick in the animal kingdom?" The scientist argues back: "You the artist see only the beautiful creature but I the scientist also know about the horrendous parasites produced by its untreated glamour." The final panel has someone shouting: "Please stop screaming!" and another replying: "Beauty and truth are cumulative in math, physics, art and literally nowhere else!"
The joke takes the well-known Feynman argument -- that scientific knowledge adds to rather than detracts from the beauty of nature -- and stress-tests it by applying it to biology and zoology, where "knowing more" means knowing about parasites, decomposition, and other genuinely disgusting details. The comic argues that Feynman's romantic notion works well for physics (where deeper knowledge reveals elegant equations and cosmic wonder) but falls apart spectacularly when applied to fields where deeper knowledge means understanding how ticks liquefy or how worms colonize dead possums. The "beauty and truth are cumulative" punchline sarcastically limits the Feynman principle to a very narrow set of disciplines.