The Beauty of SCIENCE!

I love this quote from Richard Feynman:

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

I think of this when someone tells me that learning the truth of something spoils the magic. When I tell my children about the world and how things work, I tell them the truth (in an age appropriate manner) and encourage them to see the wonder in how things really are rather than make up fairy stories. Even seemingly boring questions, like "Where does the rain come from?" or "Why does the moon change shape?" can have fascinating answers.

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