|
This is an extraordinary
result, totally unexpected, and potentially of great import.
|
Powerful theories always produce wonderful surprises; connections
not expected and often far from the main thrust of the theories themselves.
This is because theories and explanations bring more order and broader
connections than the original patterns these constructions sought to unify.
Sometimes, like the connection between light, electricity and magnetism in
Maxwell's theory of the Electromagnetic Field, these surprises are almost
immediately apparent. Sometimes they lay hidden and emerge slowly, as did the
Black Hole hypothesis from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. For me,
the Unique Artifacts theory produced a startling surprise - a connection
between science and art.
The realms of science and art have been separated since the Greek
revolution- the one logical and dedicated to the search for universal truths;
the other mysterious, affective, and dedicated to the search for beauty. Science
has traditionally been viewed as objective, representing the rules of the
external world, while art has been personal, portraying the individual
artist’s perspective on a reality full of emotional overtones. And while all
art can be said to replicate reality, even the most "realistic" represents
a personal vision of that reality. Today, science seems to be getting more
logical and rigid in its attempt to form its consensus on the way the world
works. At the same time, the arts seem to be moving further and further away
from what we think of as reality in their search in "abstraction” for
collective visions. Of course, there have been attempts to make art
scientific; like the works of George Seurat, Alexander Calder, and M. C. Escher.
And the sciences may from time to time lean on artistic metaphors as in the
choices of names like "quark" and "charm" in particle physics,
and the efforts by Hermann Weyl and others to focus on symmetry. But no one
would confuse the two, or even claim that either has much to learn from the
other.
|
A Few Incongruities
|
|
Why is it that aesthetics playa role in
scientific theory building?
|
Yet, if we begin to look for connections between the arts
and sciences, we do find odd points of correspondence. The great theories in
the sciences, particularly in physics, are often described aesthetically, as
beautiful and elegant. The invention process in the sciences is described by
the great scientists not in logical terms, but rather in words like intuition,
guess, feels right, elegance, that we associate with the arts. Certainly
these links are tenuous threads across what is a great gulf. But they are
anomalies, and it is in such odd occurrences - which poorly fit our models -
that we often find reasons to rethink fundamental assumptions. Nor should we
forget that the Pattern of Knowledge dramatically links inventions in
the arts with those of the sciences, suggesting that these great domains may
indeed be much more tightly connected then we might have imagined.
|
Decoration
|
|
Why is it that we human
beings are so artistic and so decorative?
|
Art and aesthetics have always been a major part of being
human. We take it for granted that, as a species, we are artistic. From the
earliest times, humans have decorated their clothing, painted and tattooed
themselves, drawn on cave walls, scribed rocks, carved stone, and made
trinkets and icons of bone and other materials. Most assuredly, like contemporary
tribal peoples, the earliest humans must have decorated most everything. Even
the Neanderthals decorated their graves.
It seems odd, when we really consider it, that so much time and energy
should have gone into decoration. If evolution is only about survival and
procreation, then what is the value of all of this decoration? Why, if we are
fighting "tooth and claw" for food and shelter, do we have an aesthetic
sense that we work so hard on? I even believe, that while the cause and
effect can be argued, the most successful tribal peoples were those that
produced the finest decoration. They seem to have often been the most powerful,
the most prosperous, the most inventive, and generally the dominant societies.
We are so taken with both the quality and the quantity of decoration that we
consistently credit it to religious purposes. But the pervasiveness of
decoration - the connection between fine art and successful survival, and the
huge investment that humans have put into aesthetic activity -certainly
suggests that there is much more to our interest in beauty than we generally
acknowledge. It must be a matter of survival!
|
Inventing Theories
|
|
Why is it that we know,
nearly instantly, when an idea is right?
|
The literature on scientific invention is filled with both
autobiographical comments and first hand reports of the process of invention.
The common and striking aspect of these reports could be called "instant
knowing." Most discoverers tell us that they knew they were right almost
immediately. They had been on a long search when suddenly - whether walking
in a field, sitting under an apple tree, waking from a dream, or experiencing
a revelation while stepping off a streetcar - they saw the idea, the theory,
the model, and instantly knew it was right.
Those who had the magical opportunity to be among the first to study new
inventions often replicate the reaction; the instantaneous sense of rightness.
And from both the inventors and the scholars, the universal sense of
"knowing" a theory is correct and "seeing" that it is beautiful,
is pervasive. When the 1919 eclipse results matched Einstein's General
Relativity prediction, Arthur Eddington, when asked what he would have done
if they had not, replied: "Then I would have been sorry for the dear
Lord - the theory is correct." We determine rightness very rapidly.
We do not initially rely on tests or on careful consideration - but on
intuition, on a sense of beauty, on aesthetic qualities.
|
Inventing Artifacts
|
|
How do we know a unique artifact?
We know it by its beauty.
|
We invent artifacts constantly, throw most of them away,
and fashion and perfect very few of them. We are constantly bombarded by the
artifacts of others, and we cling to very few of those; most we dismiss
without attention. We do not apply deductive or inductive logical tests to
these artifacts that we accept or dismiss; we don't have time to do that. We
are using some other method for determining which artifacts we will pay
attention to, which artifacts are unique. For physical artifacts it is
the ones that are the most beautiful, and I would argue that it is the same
for conceptual artifacts. We screen for uniqueness by beauty.
It is our aesthetic sense that is the basis for our intuition, and it is
that sense which seems to choose those artifacts we will attend to. Perhaps
that is why we have two sides to our brains: the serial, logical, linguistic,
left side, and the artistic, aesthetic, right side. I imagine that the left
side is constantly inventing new artifacts or bringing new artifacts in from
the outside world, while the right side is watching, screening, using its
sense of beauty to find those artifacts that are unique, different, the same,
or matching, and grabbing those for our attention. Our minds have to be able
to spot uniqueness quickly, to value it, and to discern what is unique and
rare from what is arbitrary and common. I believe that we do so based on
aesthetics.
|
The Search for Beauty - The
Connection Between Art and Science
|
|
Uniqueness is beauty - we judge
it by aesthetic principles.
|
How do we know when an artifact is unique? We know by how
beautiful it is! Whether we are creating physical artifacts in the arts or
conceptual artifacts in the sciences, we are doing exactly the same thing; we
are searching for uniqueness in the artifacts we fashion, and we know that
uniqueness by its aesthetic qualities. Certainly we test out that uniqueness
later, but we always make our first judgments of a new artifact by its
beauty. The arts and the sciences are both the same form of human
construction; one is physical, the other conceptual. Both build artifacts in
exactly the same way. Both require the aesthetic sense of beauty for us to
determine the uniqueness of the artifacts.
That is why people decorate. That is why we hold the arts in such high
esteem. That is why we talk about scientific creation in artistic language.
That is what underlies our humanness. We know uniqueness by beauty, and we
are constantly striving for uniqueness in all areas of our lives and thus for
beauty in all areas. It does not matter whether we are painting a cave wall
or developing a new theory of physics, we are looking for and fashioning
unique artifacts, and we are using our aesthetic sense, our sense of beauty.
We care about art because we care about uniqueness. We fashion beautiful
things because that is the best way we have of organizing our experience. We
decorate because the people with the best-developed aesthetic sense will be
the ones who can think most clearly, invent the better tools, and have the
greatest chance of survival. Or perhaps we decorate because beauty is so
important to us that we cannot help but exercise our aesthetic sense. We are
human because we love beauty.
What is unique is beautiful. What is beautiful is unique. We find beauty
in difference. We find beauty in sameness. And we find beauty in matching.
Such artifacts are unique, and such artifacts are beautiful.
Perhaps we should be spending a great deal more time developing aesthetic
sense in our schools for this may lead not only to better invention, but to
better understanding of invention.
|
