Science and sensibility

I have lived for so long in Dunedin’s hyperbolically named ‘student ghetto’ I’d almost forgotten what a huge amount of life a suburban garden can play host to.

Earlier today I sat in my parents garden an listened to flowers making love. Bees - honey and bumble - sung their ecstasy in disparate buzzes as they flitted from flower to flower. Seduced by sweet rewards and alluring shows of colour they brought with them pollen that would produce the seeds of the next generation.

It struck me as utterly bizarre in that moment (any many prior) that anyone could ever claim that scientific understanding cheapens nature’s beauty. Thanks to science I could sit in that garden and understand that in the long history of the world only last 150 million years or so (one twenty-fifth of the history of life here) have included flowers. I could understand that I as privileged enough to be a member of perhaps the only species has ever been able to stand back and appreciate the beauty and wonder of such a scene, and that we have only been here for a split second in geological time. Furthermore I understood I was one of only a very people to live so far that in the slim slice of time ( the last 150 years) in which we could justifiable say we understood how this scene was created. How can knowing that the seemingly immortal balance between flowers and their pollinators be anything but enriched by an understanding that this balance is built on interactions between its mortal members. That a system so seemingly perfect can evolve from generation upon generation of imperfection -to me at least - makes it seem all the more beautiful.