Small Prints

The idea of beauty is humbling. How is it that man can look with wonder and consider things nobler than himself? Can those things noble to one man be ignoble to another? To what degree can we or must we define beauty? To what degree is beauty absolute? If the trappings of beauty are all trimmed away and one looks at the root of the universal, what does he see?

Below is an image of a high-energy particle collision as recorded by a bubble chamber. The blue lines represent the paths of the constituent particles after the collision. This is beautiful to me, and the beauty is not arbitrary; it is absolute. This image reflects the majestic design of a Creator--my Lord. As seen in this picture, the reduction of nature to its constituents does not (as a rule) eliminate nature's marvelous beauty; rather, reductionism unearths vast worlds of beauty never before seen by man.