There is no beauty without suffering. It also applies to science

Very often I stop to describe the beauty of the natural scientist’s object of study, that is the beauty of living organisms, ecosystems, terrestrial and cosmic landscapes, a beauty that reverberates from the microscopic level, in the details of the atomic and molecular architecture of the nature, scaling up to the gigantic dimensions of celestial objects. Especially with regard to living organisms, it is easy to experience a profound aesthetic satisfaction in examining a multitude of details, behaviors, appearances, shapes and colors that easily exceed our imaginative capacities; just as it is wonderful to discover from time to time the details of the adaptations of single organisms, of groups of them, of different species and of entire ecosystems, reciprocal adaptations that often result in spectacular living panoramas to which one cannot remain indifferent.

I am aware, however, that perhaps this extreme beauty, this profound aesthetic satisfaction that we feel upon contact and in the more or less informed contemplation of what we call the natural world, meaning above all the living world, is at the basis of belief that “nature” is equipped with an “internal mechanism” capable of guaranteeing balance, wholesomeness, tranquility and other qualities which, coincidentally, we now associate almost without thinking about it with the concept of “naturalness”. καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός, beautiful and good, the Greeks idealized in the fifth century: and this inseparable conceptual link, which leads us to think that what is so beautiful can only be “good”, that is, do good to us and to the cosmos , still reverberates today in the attitude of most people in front of the supreme aesthetic virtues of the living planet. Now, I would not like my descriptions often aimed at making people appreciate the beauty of the living and its various levels of organization to reinforce this heuristic, which is instead profoundly misleading and at the basis of the conviction of the most heated and at the same time naive extremists who, by separating the man from a hypothetical nature of which he is instead at most a part, they consider human intervention always and in any case a source of exclusive ruin. A few, meager considerations are enough to demolish the association between the beauty of life on our planet, on the one hand, and the second term of equality, declined in its various meanings.

The most important lesson comes from Darwin: every aspect of the living world, and every aspect of its action on the non-living world, are the result of a horrible procedure of elimination, which we could say roughs out with the implacable chisel of natural selection those traits that we so appreciate from the living body of species and populations. Ridiculous percentages of the young of each species manage to reach adulthood: whether it is the fry of a brown trout, the brood of a titmouse, or the seeds of a silver fir, billions of billions of individuals perish every year, often suffering , being equipped with sensory systems such as to perceive pain, and sometimes prolonged and long suffering, due to certain specific adaptations. In this regard, Darwin, observing the predation of butterfly caterpillars by particular wasps, wrote to Asa Gray: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God deliberately created the Ichneumonids with the express intention that they the living body of caterpillars”. With this demonstrating how suffering and death in the living world are such as to make him lose even religious faith. Nor are individuals who reach adult life destined for a better death: almost invariably, sentient animals will perish painfully from the attack of a predator or parasite, or from excruciating starvation, unable to obtain nourishment due to too much age. advanced or for the damages received during their existence. This without counting the further action of physical conditions such as heat, cold, drought or more occasional disastrous events, which can cause suffering, wounds, suffering to animals of all kinds.

These few lines should be enough to convince everyone that the beauty of the living, and therefore of the environment modified by them, originates in a terrible millstone of death, which destroys and makes the greatest number of individuals suffer, thus modifying populations to bring those wonderful adaptations that so caress our aesthetic sense: the instrument of natural selection, that is, is the scythe of death, certainly not the artist’s brush, and there is nothing particularly healthy, tranquil, balanced, edifying or peaceful. It is recently, very little time that we have been able to forget, in our lives that flow in the well-to-do part of the world, what the price of living with less ability to influence natural phenomena and to modify the environment is than science and technology westerners allow; and it is only for this reason that we believe that human modifications are only a ruinous damage and that natural beauty corresponds to something different, compared to the terrible process that produces it, imagining that it is a balanced idyll of collaboration between different species (collaboration which certainly exists, but that is only a small aspect).

So? Do we destroy everything, creating a world devoid of other living organisms, producing food in laboratories and keeping our favorite pets with us at most? I doubt that our management skills, on a planetary scale, are such as to allow us such a possibility, if not for a few very wealthy individuals and on a geographically small scale; but even more, I am profoundly opposed to such a vision, even if it were at hand, exactly for the aesthetic reason with which I opened these brief considerations. I am deeply convinced that the beauty of our ecosystems, on a global scale, must be protected as much as possible; that is, I am convinced of the absolute need to lower our environmental impact as much as possible, by changing behaviors and technologies, not only because I believe that our survival is otherwise at risk, but also and above all because I cannot get over losing all this infinite beauty, everything this deep and varied world of organisms of every shape, size, color and behavior resulting from billions of years of biological evolution. Not the fake healthiness, the invented balance, the thaumaturgical virtues and the alleged tranquility of the natural world, to be opposed to an imaginary artificial life; these are all lies, good for the marketing of foods sold in organic markets. It is the great beauty evolved in living organisms: costing blood, suffering and death, this is the work we cannot afford to ruin, and this is the ideal towards which the best efforts of that collective mind of which we are so proud must tend. without renouncing to act on the environment, but directing our action to a better end.