Gratuitous Beauty.

Another gospel thought.

Carol noticed a while back this quote from the Sherlock Holmes story The Naval Treaty:

“What a lovely thing a rose is!"

He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects. 

"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

She especially likes the phrase "It is only goodness which gives extras," referring to the beauty we see in flowers, though nowadays those who argue for a purely naturalistic explanation for human life would say that it somehow gave us or the flowers or both some evolutionary advantage.

Lately I've been enjoying a gift I gave myself from the Great Courses of "Dark Matter, Dark Energy" where the lecturer is Sean Carroll from my old undergraduate school, Caltech.

In the lecture on Galaxies and Galactic Clusters, he makes the comment that the first thing you notice about galaxies is that they are "pretty," "beautiful," and "esthetically pleasing."  He then says he has personally wondered about that beauty and comments that it seems hard to explain their attractiveness from evolutionary psychology.

I agree.  I think the Sherlock Holmes quote applies that only goodness gives extras, and I would add galaxies as an example along with flowers.

Love,

Dad