The successful scientist thinks like a poet but works like a bookkeeper.

heh

An interesting article about the capacity of abstraction we humans have.  I do think the author is correct in saying that to understand the arts, and generally the humanities, we need to come to some better understanding of the evolutionary and cognitive forces involved in our way of  ”minding” the world.

One interesting thing about the article is what it doesn’t say, or rather the roads glimpsed but untrodden. For example, he talks a great deal about our relative sensory deprivation as a species, but doesn’t connect that to the development of arts as a way of compensation for that lack.

I do wonder why not.

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.

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.

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.

The artist’s page

via Wimp

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

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.

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: 2.00

Twice: 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.

I do not want to transmit the perception that organic metaphors are more truthful, useful, or beautiful than the mechanistic ones. Mechanistic metaphors seem more objective than organic ones, but I believe comparing the brain to a computer has the same heuristic value as comparing the brain to a cauliflower. Depending on where you put the focus of your analysis, you will highlight or hide some important characteristics about the brain. Both systems of metaphors give us opposite, but complementary intellectual models, and both have their own esthetic beauty. For instance, it is interesting to note that the telegraph-nervous system model rejected by Cajal to explain the plasticity of the cerebral cortex was useful for Hodgkin and Huxley (1952) in their Nobel Prize-winning studies of nerve action potential generation and propagation. They used the differential equation that describes coaxial cable transmission (the spatiotemporal “Telegrapher’s equation,” which had been developed to model signal propagation for the design of the transatlantic undersea cable) (Daugman, 2001). Reciprocally, the use of brain’s computer analogies has been very useful for the development of new technologies and important scientific fields like cybernetics and artificial intelligence (AI) research. These new technologies have also enhanced the development of neuroscience.

Although from a pragmatic point of view, the mechanistic metaphors can be more useful for scientists to continue their research about the brain, I find them negative as neurocultural products because they help to create a mechanical, deterministic, and reductionist vision of the human being. They hide some essential characteristics about the brain (natural origin, plasticity, self-organization, self-consciousness, emotional behavior, etc.). The vision of the nervous system that neuroculture creates is essential to envisioning ourselves and developing our life projects. From an educational perspective, I found more value to turn to another famous art-related metaphor of Cajal (1901) that envisions us as self-builders of our projects:

“Every man if he so desires becomes sculptor of his own brain.”

That idea, that we are our own creators is delightfully reflexive – like that drawing of the two hands simultaneously creating each other. And as he points out in the article, metaphors like this can be useful as a way of releasing creativity in our experience of and thinking about our selves and our world. Metaphors, whether mechanical or organic, are also dangerous. If we begin to think “this is the real solution” we lose the power of the metaphor, lose our creative push, and just become dogma.

Given the vital importance science plays in all the foundational aspects of our society, I am glad there are artists working this way, just as I am glad that there are scientists are exploring what it means to do art.