A Beautiful Conversation
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Ian McEwan on the relationship between art and science – video
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http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/nov/12/ian-mcewan-art-meets-science-video
See too:
DO THE TWO CULTURES STILL EXIST?
IAN McEWAN: That old, two-culture matter is still with us, ever since [CP] Snow promulgated it back in the 50s. It still is possible to be a flourishing, public intellectual with absolutely no reference to science but it’s happening less and less. And I think it’s less a change of any decision in the culture at large, just a social reality pressing in on us. And it’s true that climate change forces us to at least get a smattering of some idea of what it is to predict systems that have more than two or three variables and whether this is even possible. The internet has created sites like John Brockman’s wonderful edge.org, where it’s possible for laymen to sit in on conversations between scientists. And when scientists have to address each other out of their specialisms they have to speak plain English, they have to abandon their jargons, and we’re the beneficiaries of that.
NIMA ARKANI-HAMED: It’s an asymmetry that doesn’t really need to exist. Certainly many scientists are very appreciative of the arts. The essential gulf is one of language and especially in theoretical physics, the basic difficulty is that most people don’t understand our language of mathematics which we use to describe everything we know about the universe. And so while I’m capable of listening to and intensely enjoying a Beethoven sonata or an Ian McEwan novel it can be more difficult for people in the arts to have some appreciation for what we do. But at a deeper level there’s a commonality between certain parts of the arts and certain parts of the sciences.
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A-H: We often talk of the idea of beauty in theories. And I think if this is interpreted loosely you won’t get really a sense of what we mean. We have to be a little more specific. Ideas that we find beautiful are not a capricious aesthetic judgment. It’s not fashion, it’s not sociology. It’s not something that you might find beautiful today but won’t find beautiful 10 years from now. The things that we find beautiful today we suspect would be beautiful for all eternity. And the reason is, what we mean by beauty is really a shorthand for something else. The laws that we find describe nature somehow have a sense of inevitability about them. There are very few principles and there’s no possible other way they could work once you understand them deeply enough. So that’s what we mean when we say ideas are beautiful. A year ago I ran into this great lecture on YouTube by Leonard Bernstein about the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth. And Bernstein used precisely this language – not approximately this language – exactly this language of inevitability, perfect accordance to its internal logical structure and how difficult and tortuous it was for Beethoven to figure out. He used precisely the same language we use in mathematics and theoretical physics to describe our sense of aesthetics and beauty. ( cf. Conversation; my italics & bold)
Read or Listen More:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/17/art-science-ian-mcewan-nima-arkani-hamed
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You may smile or sneer… but that is among others why I am convinced of “The Harmony Model/SIDE” !!!
http://berhane-hilina.blogspot.de/2007/11/purpose-of-l-i-f-e-quintessence-purpose.html
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PS.
In this context –
José Ortega y Gasset
mentioned above must be highly interesting to know!
Philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ortega_y_Gasset
“For Ortega y Gasset, philosophy has a critical duty to lay siege to beliefs in order to promote new ideas and to explain reality. In order to accomplish such tasks the philosopher must, as Husserl proposed, leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega y Gasset proposes that philosophy must overcome the limitations of both idealism (in which reality is centered around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism (in which reality is located outside the subject) in order to focus on the only truthful reality (i.e., “my life” — the life of each individual). He suggests that there is no me without things and things are nothing without me: “I” (human being) can not be detached from “my circumstance” (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” (“I am I and my circumstance”) (Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914)[6] which he always situated at the core of his philosophy.
For Ortega y Gasset, as for Husserl, the Cartesian ‘cogito ergo sum‘ is insufficient to explain reality. Therefore the Spanish philosopher proposes a system wherein the basic or “radical” reality is “my life” (the first yo) which consists of “I” (the second yo) and “my circumstance” (mi circunstancia). This circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical interaction between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom.
In this sense Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom “is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny.” In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a “project of life” — thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project.”
WHEEL88 