> Any explanation for why flowers are beautiful is going to have to draw from multiple fields: from evolutionary biology, plant ecology, cultural anthropology,

> Any explanation for why flowers are beautiful is going to have to draw from multiple fields: from evolutionary biology, plant ecology, cultural anthropology, and human psychology, as a start. We should be skeptical of any explanation of floral beauty proposed by a psychologist who doesn’t know about pollinators – but just as much, by a biologist who doesn’t know much psychology or cultural anthropology. This is, of course, just one flavour of the more general argument that we need thought, and education, and research, that breaks down disciplinary silos. And yet the way tigers and leopards have their patterns formed was explained by a mathematician with simple math. You don't know what is required to solve a puzzle you haven't yet solved. It might be that there's 100 detailed reasons, it might be that there's a simple universal rule that requires almost no domain knowledge to guess. > What’s true of floral beauty is true, in spades, of climate-change solutions. Why? > I can pretty much guarantee the nothing proposed by an engineer without partners in biology, economics, and the social sciences won’t solve our CO2 problem (take that, enhanced weathering). I can also guarantee that nothing proposed by a biologist or a climatologist without full consideration of engineering and economics will solve our CO2 problem. The premise is false, the implication is shaky, the reasoning is done "by analogy" and magical thinking. It's not a very good article. The bait-and-switch was good tho, worked on hackernews splendidly :)