Truth & Beauty: The Puffin

Photo by Derrick Jackson for the Boston Globe

I don't know what is more mind boggling: that the universe can be explained through abstract mathematical formulas or that nature is inherently beautiful. As far as I understand, all of human life, all of civilization, amounts to fantastically complex elaborations on fundamental evolutionary instincts. The question is whether the ability and desire to perceive beauty is a ground level instinct.