The picture in question captured an art installation by the British outdoor sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. 1 chose it as a metaphor for general practice and primary care. Using simple materials, and applying a pattern, with imagination, creativity and purpose, he made something beautiful. I have created something similar myself (Figure 1). The French mathematician Poincare wrote:' The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If something were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking of course of that beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp ... Intellectual beauty, on the contrary, is self-sufficing and it is for it, more perhaps than the future good of humanity, that the scientist condemns himself to long and painful labours.'
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