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| Almost like a bullseye |
From a Darwinian point-of-view, it seems to me that flowers are way over designed — an unconscionable excessive use of beauty.
For Darwinians: Flowers just need to attract bees for pollinating their species, for
reproduction. All that is required to
get the help of the bees is a simple design like a round target [like a bullseye], emitting a bee
attracting odor, and some nectar at the center of the target. What’s with the excessive beauty?
Do bees see
and desire beauty?
Ample photographic evidence provided: Roses, dallias,
and county fair award winners
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| Can you find the bee? |
Speaking of erotic and flowers, for a good time Google “Georgia O’Keeffe Flowers”.
So if it’s not reasonable to assert that bees are motivated
by beauty and that’s why flowers are so beautiful, then that leaves the Flower Anthropic Principle: Flowers are beautiful for people. [I think Georgia
O’Keeffe understood some of that.] I know, I know, a Flower Anthropic Principle
puts humans at the center of everything again, but what’s the alternative? The
flowers are doing it for God? Bees, humans, or God — those are our choices. You
pick one.Maybe flowers somehow know that if they’re beautiful then humans will plant them in human prepared earth, from pots to acres, watered and fed, in numbers from singular to millions. Seems Darwinian to me. ;--)
Excessive flower beauty remains a mystery.
Cheers, Kurt
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| Random award winning flowers at the San Diego County Fair. |
Hi Kurt, I think you may have included at least two answers to the conundrum in your own post.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all "Is all that beauty really excessive? Who says so?" Surely the fact that it exists proves that it is necessary and useful. As you suggest the whole purpose of flowers is to attract pollinating insects to ensure the organisms' survival, like every other aspect of evolution this is a competitive activity but not consciously competitive. The flowers do not need to know that they are beautiful, it's just that the ones that are beautiful, and attractive to insects, survive better. This of course does raise another interesting point in that it implies that flowers that insects find attractive are also attractive to humans - but then why not, we have all followed a similar evolutionary journey so maybe the commonality is not that surprising. You might however want to test this hypothesis by attempting to find successful widespread flowers (read weeds) that humans do NOT find beautiful - I have a feeling that there might be many.
The other solution suggested in your post Kurt is that "the flowers somehow know that if they’re beautiful then humans will" propagate them and ensure their success. In a sense of course this is perfectly true, it's just that the flowers don't actually "know", but those that do attract such cosseting do well and those that don't die out. This is the same evolutionary adaption as plants that produce fruits that are attractive to birds or other animals which eat the fruit and spread the seeds in their fertile dung. That's a useful adaptation that has developed over millions of years I suppose, I'm not sure that the roses and dahlias are on to such an effective strategy however as it's not at all obvious that humans and garden centres will be around that long.
Actually, I don't know for sure why the whole thing is beautiful.
Delete---
One time we were driving from point A to point B thru' the Colorado Plateau in Utah. We came up over a rise and were suddenly exposed to so much beauty it literally took our breath away [proving that that's not just a saying, but can really happen]. What was there? just a huge landscape of randomly eroded rock.
P.S.
ReplyDeleteGreat photographs Kurt, thanks!
Thanks. But actually I think of photographing flowers as kinda cheating, in that the flowers are doing all the real creative work and the photographer is just sorta plagiarizing. ;--)
DeleteMaybe you're being a little too self critical Kurt, of course the flowers are great, and there are lots of amazingly beautiful things in nature, we can recognise that and that's fine. It takes a special talent to recognise and capture the beauty, often at just the right place and moment in time, your work can make those moments available to many who would otherwise have missed them.
DeleteActually, I don't know for sure why the whole thing is so beautiful.
ReplyDelete---
One time we were driving from point A to point B thru' the Colorado Plateau in Utah. We came up over a rise and were suddenly exposed to so much beauty it literally took our breath away [proving that that's not just a saying, but can really happen]. What was there?... just a huge landscape of randomly eroded rock, a lot of it sort of a burnt orange.
Ah ... now you're getting into deep water Kurt and way beyond simple scientific explanations. "What is beauty?" According to Bertrand Russell "Beauty is subjective and only in the eye of the beholder" ... maybe. Or maybe not, maybe it is a recognition of some form of perfection that we are programmed to appreciate ... What is "Beauty'? What is 'Art' these are toughies, maybe we should ask Isobel, but she doesn't know, or bother about it, she just does it. I suppose she's an artist and don't look back ...
ReplyDeleteOne of the constants that I've learned from you and others is that creativity is a human constant, including business, engineering, etc. Quantity and quality varies a lot of course, but there's a whole lot of it going on.
ReplyDelete"She's got everything she needs, she's an artist
ReplyDeleteShe don't look back
She's got everything she needs, she's an artist
She don't look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black