SubscribeMay 8th, 2012
books and ideas that hook
I sometimes think of a “self” as a conceptual collage. Like a pieced quilt ideas grow into each other, the edges seamed to make something that works as a whole. For someone like me, many of those “pieces” come from books.
I’m not going to list those but I’ve just added another.
I’ve been reading (on and off) Chance & Necessity by Jacques Monod. It was suggested to me by a reader here (Thanks!) and trusting her assessment I added it to my rather full current reading list.
I love science, and in particular chemistry and biology, so a book such as Monod’s was pretty much destined to be a good one for me. But this book!
I suppose what is so compelling for me about the book is not really the appeal to choice, or chance (as an explanation for our existence) or even reason, but rather the ideas that connect the shape of complex molecules and information. It’s that concordance of material expression and information; it feels like a rhizome growing at a high rate of speed down in the dark of my mind.
Here’s another oddity: for some reason this connects with Bachelard’s book on domestic space. Why that should be so I don’t yet know, at least not consciously. Apart from the two authors’ cultural commonalities, there seems little reason to connect them, but they are contiguous pieces in this developing “quilt” of mine. I know that somehow.
The idea that the nature of noncovalent chemical bonds and their energy potential underlies more gross forms as well as macromolecular structure itself as information–it tumbles my mind around with the implications.
In a section talking about the apparent contradiction between the idea of the genome “entirely defining” the function of a protein, and the idea that the expressed shape of a manifested protein has “surplus” information – this is it I think, the thing that messes with my mind.
He explains this apparent contradiction through chance in the form of environmental conditions.
A careful and detailed scrutiny of the mechanisms of molecular epigenesis disposes of this objection. The enrichment of information evidenced in the forming of three-dimensional protein structures comes from the fact that genetic information (represented by the sequence) is expressed under strictly defined initial conditions (aqueous phase, narrow latitude of temperatures, ionic composition, etc.). The result is that of all the structures possible only one is actually realized. Initial conditions hence enter among the items of information finally enclosed within the globular structure. Without specifying it, they contribute to the realization of a unique shape by elimitating all alernative stuructures, in this way proposing – or rather, imposing – an unequivocal interpretation of potentially equivocal message.
The implications!
I popped over to the web and looked up a few reactions to Monod’s book. Of the ones I saw, the majority were from religious fellows and Oh! they did not like the book. Not surprised. Essentially, should the biology/chemistry be correct, (Monod was a Nobel Laureate) macromolecular materially encoded information is the necessary engine by which matter comes to express sentience. Oh so very cool.
It does have a downside though. It makes me want to go back to school to take more degrees, but this time in science. And I just don’t have the requisite number of years it would take me to catch up on all the stuff I don’t know.
Meh.
April 9th, 2012
knowing shit
At Edge they have a download link for 60 pages of Karoly Simonyi’s A Cultural History of Physics.
From reality by way of abstraction to natural law, and from law back again to reality— it is over this closed path that science walks. The correctness of a theory, and indeed the correctness of the whole methodology, is thus ensured by this twofold connection with reality.
As we shall see, this insight was long in coming, and it established itself only after significant intellectual struggle. No matter how obvious we consider this method to be today, historically it was not so at all.
Heh. Still, despite the author’s faith in the sensibility of the contemporary human mind, the book is fabulous. The quotations, the illustrations, and – of course – the text are all full of delights.
Here’s another quote:
To appreciate the beauty of (a) the general theory of relativity, (b) a sculpture, or (c) a poem, one requires, in each case, a certain willingness to learn and a considerable investment of intellectual effort. Einstein’s equation, which brings together the ideas of mass and the geometry of space, yields astounding new knowledge about our entire universe.
Uhuh. The willingness to learn – to recognize an inner lack of understanding and basic knowledge – that’s the ticket. It’s also the biggest road block because many people are deeply invested in an idea of themselves as canny and essentially “in the know”. Letting go of that can prove pretty much impossible. It’s as if they think they’ll die if it gets known they don’t understand the way the world works. So even when they make a great big booboo (remember the banana as a proof of god?), do they say, oh I guess my premise was wrong? Apparently not, instead he says the atheists took it all out of context.
Heh.
Anyway, read Simonyi. It may not make you laugh like Comfort does but at least you’ll have something beautiful in front of your face.
April 5th, 2012
art here in Vancouver
Those of you who have read here for a while know I am a fan of street art. A local collective came to my attention today. They are called redgate.
The short story is that they got evicted from their digs so that the rent could be increased (8-fold). The cost of housing is not one of the good things about living here.
They have found a new place to work but the City hasn’t yet decided (apparently) to let them pay rent in the location. What, I wonder, is the problem?
I signed their petition at the link above.
I do wonder, though, why Van would hold back. Apparently, the Olympics basically killed the street art scene here and I do wonder if the City officials think that this was a good thing. I suppose they might, although they would be deeply wrong.
If it is the case that refusing rental accommodation is a kind of repression, I doubt very much if it will stop the collective, or if it does end them, another will pop up, and the street art scene will regrow at some point. There are just some things that can’t be stopped without full-on civilization death.
It’s odd really, the idea that the City might be trying to keep them out, because there is a decent granting system for artists in Canada, BC and the City of Vancouver – I mean compared to other places I’ve lived. But I suppose that is “recognized” art – art that has a kind of peer-review system in place. I do get the value of that but art isn’t science. There isn’t a wrong way to do art.
Oh well, what I can do is sign the petition and possible some more hands-on kinds of support. I’ll check into that after Easter.
March 6th, 2012
looking for value in weird-assed ideas
I found a book called Onto-Ethologies: The Animal Environments of Uexküll, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze by Brett Buchanan. I mean, oooooooooh. So right up my alley. For those of you that want to read Uexküll, you can find Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning as a digital book. I’ve got a copy through one of my local universities so I can’t post a link (since you’d need a library login to get to it).
For this post I just want to speak a bit about Jakob von Uexküll and some of his weird-assed ideas.
To begin, please remember that Jakob was born in 1864, Darwin’s Origin was published in 1859 and the core of classical genetics wasn’t in place until 1915.
Weird-assed idea number 1: natural selection is inadequate to explain “the orientation of present features and behaviours toward future ends–purposefulness.” (Dorion Sagan, from Unwelt After Uexküll (introduction, page 3).
Weird-assed idea number 2: “nonhuman perceptions must be accounted for in any biology worthy of the name” (same set of Sagan passages)
Weird-assed idea number 3: Meaning has priority in all living beings.
Weird-assed idea number 4: There’s a master plan somewhere outside of individual form that guides “purpose.”
Weird-assed idea number 5: All living beings are subjects, and not mere objects.
Weird-assed idea number 6: “When a dog runs, the animal moves its feet, i.e., the harmony of the footsteps is centrally controlled. But in the case of a starfish we say: ‘When a starfish moves, the legs move the animal.’ That is, the harmony of the movement is in the legs themselves. It is like an orchestra that can play without a conductor.” The starfish’s legs take the starfish along, whereas you decide where you want your feet to go.” (Dorion Sagan again)
There are other weird ideas but that’s enough to go on with.
Pick them apart. To say “meaning has priority in all living beings” implies that context and environment takes priority because meaning is only found in the relationship between one form and another. That’s actually quite a radical suggestion even today, but to understand what the author was really doing one has to understand, or at least be familiar with, the fight over the concept of life form as subject or object, the fight over the concept of bio-mechanism.
Animals are mere machines: If you could go back in time would you kill Descartes?
I get the concern to pull back from any idea that the non-human living world is mechanistic in the same way my blender is mechanistic but a basic grounding in science today should have already blown that idea apart. But remember Jakob isn’t today’s scientist. He’s still immersed in the idea of vitalism.
Here’s how Jakob shows that particular fight: “We ask a simple question: Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject?”
And there you go: down the rabbit hole of assumed shit.
In today’s parlance the machine and the operator are one. To separate them is to miss the point of the wonders of complex chemical signalling and information processing that occur in the inanimate world, and of which the animate (living) world make use.
So here’s the thing…can we still make use of the weird-assed ideas given vitalism’s influence in Jakob’s work?
Oh yes, I think so. In fact it’s a good thing to do so because we get more practice in pulling apart insight and interpretation. The idea that purpose is a hall-mark of life forms is an insight. Attributing that fact to some “master-plan” is interpretation.
Once purpose is divorced from teleology one can generate new interpretations based on the wealth of fact we’ve gained in recent decades.
And then in a few more decades we’ll do the same with today’s interpretations.
And so science, and thinking, proceed.
February 26th, 2012
think I’m in love
I’m reading Materialism: An affirmative history and definition by Richard C Vitzthum and read this to a distinct throbbing in the heart.
The material order is limitless in every respect, rendering the concepts of “nothingness” or “nonbeing” meaningless There can be no “nothingness” or “nonbeing” in the plenitude of being postulated by materialism, only varieties of material being. This plenitude of being has no gaps, breaks, or noncontinuities. There is no immaterial or supernatural region zoned off from it or from which it is zoned off. The notion of such a zoning is both logically incoherent and inconsistent with everything known about the material order.
This was the second paragraph I read in the book. It’s the summary definition at the end, and once completed, I returned to the actual beginning of the book assured that here was something I wanted to grasp in as much detail of which I am capable. Of course, I know nothing about his developed argument yet, nor do I know anything about the author, so my “love” may well modify over the coming chapters, but at the moment, to have a book that begins with the assumption of a material universe, and appears about to proceed with a definition of matter, well, like I said, I think I’m in love.
Partly this visceral response is because the central question for me has never been “if not materialism then what”. Materialism is the only viable option. The question has always been how to define “matter” correctly. No hard little bits of atom-balls here. No passive, inert prima materia. Matter is something else entirely.
He goes on to summarize our current conception of “matter”. Here is a piece.
The essential component of the material order is a substance whose nature is not yet and may never be fully known or understood. Current theory suggests that the substance reflects the symmetries of time, change, and parity, which are found only in concentrations of mass-energy exceeding the limits of the known laws of physics. At such levels of concentration, mass, energy, time, and space are perhaps either indistinguishable parts of a metacosmic force field or one-dimensional strings of energy whose shape and tension determine everything else in the cosmos.
I mean! How wonderful a beginning! I am soooooooo happy!
February 25th, 2012
sound, shadow and gods
Something happens. Your skin goes on alert. Peck, peck, peck your eyes try to find what your body “knows” must be a looming presence. But all you see is a shadow moving; feel sound breaking over the spikes the hair is making on the back of your neck.
What do you do next?
Your mind will make a decision long before you are aware that such a decision was even in the offing.
Our bodies have been crafted by time and environment to assume certain things about the world. Object constancy for example. You see a ball roll behind a bucket, you don’t assume the ball vanished. A two year old knows better than that. A puppy does too.
The decision made by your body in the face of creeping shadow is akin to object constancy. You will have decided, long deep in the unaware, fast-acting system of yours, that there is a presence out there because something must have caused the shadow and the sound to move and act this way.
OK as far as it goes, but now you get to make another decision. This time an aware one.
Here’s a real-life example of what I’m talking about. From Physics Buzz
At a pyramid temple, the pairing of seasonal shadows and sound reflection produces a striking combination. Starting on the spring equinox, in which day and night are equal lengths, a shadow glides down the temple steps and, over several days, transform into different shapes as it moves across the courtyard.
Most scholars believe the shadow represents the serpent god Kulkulkan wearing feathers of the resplendent quetzal, a bird the Mayans called the messenger of the gods.
Lubman thinks the shadow is the bird itself. Its path down the temple represents the straight-down mating dives of quetzal males, wings folded and tail feathers fluttering, that occur at spring equinox. Lubman believes priests stood at the bottom of the temple and clapped their hands. Each of the temple’s 91 stairs scatter the sound. Together, they reflect back a series of echoes that makes a tonal sound resembling a quetzal’s chirp. Lubman suggested that Mayan priests used this uncanny echo to reinforce their role as interpreters of their gods’ messenger.
Notice that last sentence please. And then think about how much detailed observation must have been put into the process of site construction and/or site use to achieve such a sensory bit of wonder.
The observer: the scientist in all of us.
The interpreter: the story teller.
We all have both. How you make that second (but aware) decision will show where you put the weight of value between your observer-self and your interpreter-self.
If those Mayan priests and those Mayan citizens bought the invisible flying god narrative, their valuation falls heavily on the story side of things. This means that observation is at the service of story. There are wonders to this type of thinking. Things like a life spent rocketing from one wonder to the next, from one hair-stand-on-end moment to the next. And there are problems with it_one narrative example: the idea of the holy fool who, following an invisible butterfly, walks off a cliff pulling his followers with him.
If one puts observation first and makes story at the service of sensory data and detail, this is what I think of as Enlightenment science. It can be a bit dry when story plays little part in a life, but on the plus side, it’s this kind of person that notices site properties like the Mayan temple site and it’s this kind of person that can bring such a thing to life for the rest of us.
(To be absolutely truthful, there is an inordinate amount of awe and wonder in the apprehension of complex molecules, but to get there, to that place of scientific narrative glee, a shit load of knowledge has to be gained. People often find the illusions of the body an easier endorphin fix because the bodily knowledge needed is gained by virtue of human evolution and just moving around the world following your birth.)
If I had to choose between these two extremes? Of course I would pick observation. Much more powerful a position. Need I remind you that Mayan civilization, despite possible priestly claims, is no more?
Humour aside, there is a third option, but to maintain it requires a delicate balance, an exact stance on a very thin line between the two sides of a single mountain peak. The two sides: story and fact. The mountain top: the function of awareness in the vast mountain of unaware decisions made every moment by your unaware body/mind.
You can try to retain an equal weight on both observation and story, but for it to work well, you’ll need to make sure your dominant foot is on the observation side. What does this mean? There should be a pang when your current story-bubble pops at the pricking of its skin by the sharp-stone of observable fact, but pop it must. You need your emotional attachment to the narratives that ring your sense of self. It is attachment that causes those feelings of bliss, awe and sublime terror when something in the world slides by, clittering echoes in its wake. But to wake up, the attachment has to be thin skinned and breakable by the hard stone of the world that actually exists under your foot.
February 20th, 2012
awesome new book on creativity
Steal Like An Artist – Teaser Book Trailer from Austin Kleon on Vimeo.
on Amazon being released February 28 – hope it’s going to be a kindle book too
February 13th, 2012
science and art_questions and the willingness to be wrong
In an article about the Santa Fe Institute and Cormac McCarthy
In addition to aesthetics, McCarthy noted a deeper link between great science and great writing. “Both involve curiosity, taking risks, thinking in an adventurous manner, and being willing to say something 9/10ths of people will say is wrong.”
Here’s another bit:
Rebecca Saxe, a neuropsychologist at MIT, sat down next to Shepard and the two began discussing how the media often creates a misleading impression of scientists and artists. “The point of science journalism is an answer. But science is fundamentally human in that it involves not understanding things. We actually spend a lot of time in pursuit of the questions,” she said. Just as science journalism tends to emphasize only results, interviews with authors often seek a simplistic summation of an entire work. “I can never answer the question ‘What’s it about?’” Shepard said. “Some people approach artists as if they have a secret. And if only they’d give it up then we could stop thinking about them.”
And that’s it I think_the desire for closure, for an answer, when it is stronger than the capacity to remain open to alternatives, to the questions which lurk in places our eyes cannot see. Such a desire for a narrative with an assured ending is both fundamentally unscientific and fundamentally inartistic.
February 12th, 2012
what to do when someone doesn’t like your art
Over at Letters of Note there is an entry from Giuseppe Verdi having to do with one Prospero Bertani, late of Parma.
Bertani paid to go into to town to hear the new opera Aida. Upon not finding it to his taste he wrote to the artist. Here is the last bit of his letter.
I came to the following conclusion: the opera contains absolutely nothing thrilling or electrifying, and if it were not for the magnificent scenery, the audience would not sit through it to the end. It will fill the theatre a few more times and then gather dust in the archives. Now, my dear Signor Verdi, you can imagine my regret at having spent 32 lire for these two performances. Add to this the aggravating circumstance that I am dependent on my family, and you will understand that his money preys on my mind like a terrible specter. Therefore I address myself frankly and openly to you so that you may send me this sum. Here is the account:
Railroad, going: 2.60
Railroad, returning: 3.30
Theatre: 8.00
Disgustingly bad dinner: 2.00Twice: 15.90
Total: 31.80
In the hope that you will extricate me from this dilemma,
I am yours sincerely,
Bertani
I like, in particular, the thoughtful list of his expenses so Verdi could make recompense.
Verdi, amused, sent the letter on to his publisher Giulio Ricordi asking him to send most of the money (he wouldn’t pay for the man’s bad dinner since he could have eaten at home) and asking Ricordi to get a written agreement from Bertani that he wouldn’t go see any more of Verdi’s operas.
The fool agreed. Ricordi published the letter.
Ricordi to Verdi:
Milan, 16 May 1872
Dear Giuseppe,
As soon as I received you last letter I wrote to our correspondent in Reggio, who found the famous Signor Bertani, paid the money, and got the proper receipt! I amc opying the letter and receipt for the newspaper, and I shall return everything to you tomorrow. Oh, what fools there are in this world! But this is the best one yet!
The correspondent in Reggio writes me: “I sent immediately for Bertani, who came to me right away. Advised of the reason for my invitation, he first showed surprise, but then said: ‘If Maestro Verdi reimburses me, this means that he has found what I wrote him to be correct. It’s my duty to thank him, however, and I ask you to do it for me.’”
This one is even better!
Pleased to have discovered this rarity of the species, I send the most cordial greetings to you and Signora Peppina.
Giulio
Such fools are a delight really. Good thing too since there are so many of them.
To Prospero Bertani! May I remember him when someone tells me to stop writing poetry.