# Quote — Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire

> Beauty and nature often shows up in the vicinity of sex—think of the plumage of birds or mating rituals through out the animal kingdom. “Sexual selection”—that is, evolution’s favoring of features that increase a plant’s or animal’s attractiveness and therefore it's reproductive success—is the best explanation we have for the otherwise senseless extravagance of feathers and flowers, maybe also sports cars and bikinis. In nature, at least, the expense of beauty is usually paid for by sex.
>
> There may or may not be a correlation between the beautiful and the good, but there probably is one between beauty and health. (Which, I suppose, in Darwinian terms, is the good.) Evolutionary biologists believe that in many creatures beauty is a reliable indicator of health, and therefore a perfectly sensible way to choose one mate over another. Gorgeous plumage, lustrous hair, symmetrical features are “certificates of health,” as one scientist puts it, advertisements that a creature carries genes for resistance to parasites and is not otherwise under stress. A fabulous tail is a metabolic extravagance only the healthy can afford.

- Author: [Michael Pollan](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan.md)
- Book: [The Botany of Desire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire.md)
- Page: 74
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan#The_Botany_of_Desire_(2001)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/beauty-and-nature

## More from this book

> Aldous Huxley did his best to argue us out of the view that a chemically conditioned spiritual experience is false—and he did so long before we knew anything about cannabinoid or opioid receptor networks….He points out that mystics have always worked systematically to modify their brain chemistry, whether through fasting, self-flagellation, sleeplessness, hypnotic movement, or chanting.†
>
> †Huxley suggests that the reason there aren’t nearly as many mystics and visionaries walking around today, as compared to the Middle Ages, is the improvement in nutrition. Vitamin deficiencies wreak havoc on brain function and probably explain a large portion of visionary experiences in the past.

p. 171 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/aldous-huxley-did.md)

> But is this wonder the real thing? At first glance, it wouldn’t seem to be: a transcendence that’s chemically induced must surely be fake. Artificial Paradises was what Charles Baudelaire called his 1860 book about his experiences with hashish, and that sounds about right. Yet what if it turns out that the neurochemistry of transcendence is no different whether you smoke marijuana, meditate or enter a hypnotic trance by way of chanting, fasting, or prayer? What if in every one of these endeavors, the brain is simply prompted to produce large quantities of cannabinoids, thereby suspending short-term memory and allowing us to experience the present deeply?…From a brain’s point of view, the distinction between a natural and an artificial high may be meaningless.

p. 170 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/but-is-this.md)

> There are a lot more roses and tulips around today, in a lot more places, then there were before people took an interest in them. For a flower the path to world domination passes through humanity’s ever-shifting ideals of beauty.

p. 79 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/there-are-a-lot.md)