The physics of beauty is one department of natural science still in the Dark Ages. Not even the manipulators of bent space have tried to solve its equations. Everyone knows that the autumn landscape in the north woods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a ruffled grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or energy of an acre. Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead.
- Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac

Sharman Apt Russell from her book Anatomy of a Rose, Exploring the secret life of flowers

Subtract flowers from the world and the whole world is dead from a human point of view. The nonflowering plants on earth include the mosses, liverworts, conifers, cycads, ferns, and gingko trees. Almost every other plant, everything we and other animals eat, requires a flower for reproduction.

            We know that flowers are beautiful. We forget that they are also essential. . .

We are beginning to explore the physics of beauty. Philosophers and scientists have come together to name certain universal themes.

The universe tends toward complexity.
The universe is a web of relationship.
The universe tends toward symmetry.
The universe is rhythmic.
The universe tends toward self-organizing systems.
The universe depends on feedback and response.
Thus, the universe is “free” and unpredictable.

The themes of the universe may be the elements of beauty. Certainly, they are the elements of flowers.