(This is not a post about surgically enhanced stars, starlets, and/or starfish. Stop reading if you expect gross details about cosmetic surgery and other related gimmickry.)

As I was playing with crackers this Diwali (so sue me), I payed attention to the anars and the fuljhadis: magnesium and various other elements oxidizing giving out large amounts of heat, noise, and smoke. (I just inserted an Oxford comma -- the one just before the and if you don't notice.) And it was extremely pleasing. Burning white hot, or with its own colour, the sparkler was quite beautiful in its own way.

Can science be beautiful? What is beauty? Can anything which is classified by cold, hard facts and governed by fixed equations be beautiful? Why are facts considered cold, hard (except to Scientists)?

Take a look at various fractals. The mandelbrot pattern, various fractals are generated using programs which really appeal to us. Various programs create beautiful symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns which are extremely attractive.

Crackers, certain decorative chemical reactions, various computer generated reactions, even the concept of beauty as percieved by humans has been studied as a science. Various phenomena (such as the auroras), involving physics are breathtaking.

Indeed, can anything be separated from science? Is there any such thing in the world that cannot be quantified, observed, studied?

Various phenomena that scientists have observed have been carefully studied, quantified and noted down. Occasionally the phenomenon is even mathematically modeled before the actual science behind the phenomenon has been discovered/observed/understood. Case in point: quantum physics; the behaviour of photons, and all mass for that matter.

Philosophy, which used a term encompassing all science as we know it today has been drastically reduced to only certain areas is still part of physics. Does the act of observation change the object being observed? Does anything actually exist and have properties or are the properties a result of the act of observation? Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound if there is no-one to hear it? This also corresponds to the beliefs of many religions.

Can any area of study be completely independent of all other areas? Can anyone gain a complete perspective on a certain subject without knowledge of other subjects related to it? Can a single person obtain the complete picture of any object in a single lifetime? Would not the complete and absolute knowledge of a single object involve knowledge of everything that exists because everything is in some way or the other related?

Perhaps what expresses this all in words that are simple and yet beyond me is an excerpt from Elton John's The Circle of Life :

There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found

And all we can do is to learn as much as we can. To study, and to perhaps understand a fragment of the world we live in; to really understand the why, the what, the where. The task is formidable. Perhaps Terry Pratchett expressed this best in Lords and Ladies:

[...] the agonized expression of a man who has the whole great whirring machinery of the Universe to dismantle and only a bent paper clip to do it with. [...]

All of us are in the same situation. All of us have our own universes to decipher, to dismantle, to analyze. And most probably, none of us will succeed.

But we will all try. Because we are human. Because we are curious. Because we are alive.

But most of all, because we think.