Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" continues to reflect a reality of science today that believes all things can be improved. Like Aylmer looking at his wife Georgiana and seeing only her birthmark as a flaw to be fixed, scientists today look at nature and humanity and see not beauty or symmetry, but imperfections. We do not like to see blight on our plants, birth defects in our children, the ravages of disease, or the effects of natural disasters. Indeed a scientist's first impulse is to do something about them, to find a cure.

Humans go to extreme measures to become "perfect", we burn ourselves with lasers, cut ourselves with scalpels, and inject ourselves with poison in an effort to become flawless. Aylmer, like scientists today, does not see nature as an incredible wonder at which to appreciate, but as a complex code waiting to be cracked, simplified, and solved...