This is a fantastic introduction, and such an immense undertaking ! I'm going to have to read it a few more times i think :) Though i thought i'd share something because the passage where you wrote that no visual artists went to space (before 2021 that is) reminded me of Alexei Leonov - a russian cosmonaut, the first man to walk in space in 1965. He was artist first, and joined the military to support his family. He somehow found his way in the soviet space program and was the first person to make art in space - a view of the sun made with colorpencils. To think of the diffculty to bring *anything* in space, and the dangers of it at the time, and they still found a way to give him paper and pencils... He made a lot of paintings about his space travels, as well as a more "finished" rendition of the sketch he did in space (you can see it in this article https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/31/first-picture-space-cosmonauts-science-museum-alexei-leonov and here an account of his first mission that absolutely gave me vertigo https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-nightmare-of-voskhod-2-8655378/ ) I know you were making a point about the hurtful split between art and science when it comes to the exploration of the universe, and the point stands ! But i cannot help but think of Alexei doodling in space, unaware he is the exception to the rule x)
I love your approach and the Grandmother Paradox is perfect :)
Like you, I’ve taken a wide interest in many facets of human activity.
Long ago, I concluded that science was largely based on the derivation of mathematical models of theoretical forms and their theoretical properties that together with certain theoretical constants and theoretical laws, determine their theoretical behaviour
We say a theory is valid when the theoretical behaviour of the theoretical forms maps or predicts the observed behaviour of observed forms. That is all.
No theory can ever get at the ‘essence’ of the forms, or of this Consciousness in which and to which the theories and the observations appear.
Nor can they say anything about the ‘lived experience’: the thrill and terror of battle, eating a meal with friends, arguing with the kids, listening to a sublime symphony or dancing to the beat of hard rock, noticing the foul stench of rotting garbage in a back alley... or any of the infinite experiences that arise within Awareness.
Thanks for that Hofstadter paper! Analogical thinking is also central to my work, so I'm intrigued by this project. Personally, I've gotten along with science a lot better since I realized that it's analogical just like everything else, and therefore also a kind of fiction or poetry...so I'm all for more visible literature/science hybrids.
Hi! Usually I don't comment on things, but this reminded me of an article I read a while back about an astronaut artist who did paintings about space when he returned. Couldn't find the article again, so I'm just linking to the wikipedia page here, and another site that shows his paintings. The article explained the stories behind two of his paintings, The Fantasy and The Fabulous Photo We Never Took.
Love how you think Julian and your writing is astronomical!! This explains why I, a person who loves the sky, star watching, the planets, the nebulas, and all things the universe, have never took to the science of it. I always felt it was too boring. I enjoy swimming in the Big picture and dipping in and out of every detail along the way. So pleased to be doing this with you! A galaxy of gratitude to you.
The meaning of data; the data of meaning. I'm fascinated to see where this ends up, having faced the exact issue of The Grandmother Problem (specifically how to evaluate something from the humanities realm with a method borrowed from the field of mathematics) in one of my own research papers. Thank you for this most intriguing introduction!
Very excited about this. I think one of the most interesting periods that I hope you will end up talking about in this project is the time when the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was being developed. To vastly oversimplify, you see a physicists following the math, achieving very powerful mathematical models that match the data, and then being forced to do at least a bit of philosophy to try to understand what they had actually made.
If you haven't read it, you might want to check out the superb AEGYPT tetralogy by a writer named John Crowley (most famous as the author of the equally-superb stand-alone novel LITTLE, BIG). The first of the four volumes is called THE SOLITUDES. It's half set in the 1970s, half in the1500s, and is a mainstream historical fantasy novel. The historical parts have a number of characters, but its two main characters are John Dee and Giodorno Bruno. No spoilers, but the latter dies in the tetralogy. Not, however, at its end. Anyway you might enjoy them. They're brilliant books.
(Just landed here via the "I wrote a story for a friend" post & am poking around...)
It's unclear to me what problem you are trying to solve.
Yes, science has its own specialized language which is not amenable to expressing certain aspects of human experience. So what? Music also has its own specialized language (one that is largely opaque to me, not being musical myself). Other domains have their specialized approaches and terminology as well.
Yes, there are many questions within the domain of science, such as the motion of spiral galaxies you mentioned, that remain unexplained by science. Again, so what? No rational scientist claims that science is omniscient, and Nature doesn't always reveal her secrets on a schedule that is convenient for us. Sending poets into space is not going to solve the riddles of spiral galaxies and dark matter.
To the extent modern science has problems -- and I agree with you that it does -- I think these come from neglecting the need for difficult, time-consuming experimentation and data analysis, instead taking the easy path of "expert" opinion, computer models that are not empirically validated, and mathematical speculation. The latter is the problem Sabine Hossenfelder addresses in her "Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray" book.
Science has other problems as well, such as politicization, the reproducibility crisis, and neglect of Feynman's dictum to be honest about the evidence both for and against one's pet theory. But I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with the language of science or the scientific method.
Last night I had a dream … it felt repetitive and I mostly remember the colors… but at end , there was an odd looking man whose arms were extended in front of him and in one hand he held an egg and in the other a rock. I didn’t understand and woke up immediately.
I typed “an egg and a rock” into the browser and a couple of things came up. An
African proverb but it didn’t resonate and further down the page, an article entitled:
“The egg and the rock.” This .
I knew there would be something to it.
Love this project. I’ve already shared the link with three others who I believe will feel equal enthusiasm.
Late in the game, just joined, still catching up. Excellent endeavour - I'm currently following with interest also David Deutsch (through TokCast podcast) - maybe you're already reading him too and I'll see that as I catch up with the rest of the posts.
Just found your book Julian and I am very much enjoying it so far. When I explain math to my children I tell them, 'There are two roads between what is inside of you and the outside world. Math and Art. You have to use one or both of these roads to get things from the outside in or from the inside out.'
The real tragedy of Bruno's story to me is that it was the Church that killed a man for seeing, killed many men for seeing. The old medieval concept of the Two Swords-the spiritual and the worldly, and the need to keep these two swords out of the same hands, is very helpful here. Our ancestors grappled with a church that had overrun the state and seized its power, we grapple with a state, and its scientific and media handmaidens, that has overrun the church and is making a new one according to its own brainless ideas. Two sides of the same rotten coin. We live in a world of blind men and I can't help but think of the Lord's words to their ancestors so long ago, 'If you said you were blind you would have no sin, but because you say 'I see' your sin remains.'
This is a fantastic introduction, and such an immense undertaking ! I'm going to have to read it a few more times i think :) Though i thought i'd share something because the passage where you wrote that no visual artists went to space (before 2021 that is) reminded me of Alexei Leonov - a russian cosmonaut, the first man to walk in space in 1965. He was artist first, and joined the military to support his family. He somehow found his way in the soviet space program and was the first person to make art in space - a view of the sun made with colorpencils. To think of the diffculty to bring *anything* in space, and the dangers of it at the time, and they still found a way to give him paper and pencils... He made a lot of paintings about his space travels, as well as a more "finished" rendition of the sketch he did in space (you can see it in this article https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/31/first-picture-space-cosmonauts-science-museum-alexei-leonov and here an account of his first mission that absolutely gave me vertigo https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-nightmare-of-voskhod-2-8655378/ ) I know you were making a point about the hurtful split between art and science when it comes to the exploration of the universe, and the point stands ! But i cannot help but think of Alexei doodling in space, unaware he is the exception to the rule x)
I love your approach and the Grandmother Paradox is perfect :)
Like you, I’ve taken a wide interest in many facets of human activity.
Long ago, I concluded that science was largely based on the derivation of mathematical models of theoretical forms and their theoretical properties that together with certain theoretical constants and theoretical laws, determine their theoretical behaviour
We say a theory is valid when the theoretical behaviour of the theoretical forms maps or predicts the observed behaviour of observed forms. That is all.
No theory can ever get at the ‘essence’ of the forms, or of this Consciousness in which and to which the theories and the observations appear.
Nor can they say anything about the ‘lived experience’: the thrill and terror of battle, eating a meal with friends, arguing with the kids, listening to a sublime symphony or dancing to the beat of hard rock, noticing the foul stench of rotting garbage in a back alley... or any of the infinite experiences that arise within Awareness.
Good luck... I’ll be reading :)
Thanks for that Hofstadter paper! Analogical thinking is also central to my work, so I'm intrigued by this project. Personally, I've gotten along with science a lot better since I realized that it's analogical just like everything else, and therefore also a kind of fiction or poetry...so I'm all for more visible literature/science hybrids.
Hi! Usually I don't comment on things, but this reminded me of an article I read a while back about an astronaut artist who did paintings about space when he returned. Couldn't find the article again, so I'm just linking to the wikipedia page here, and another site that shows his paintings. The article explained the stories behind two of his paintings, The Fantasy and The Fabulous Photo We Never Took.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Bean
http://www.alanbeangallery.com/dualperson-story.html
Love how you think Julian and your writing is astronomical!! This explains why I, a person who loves the sky, star watching, the planets, the nebulas, and all things the universe, have never took to the science of it. I always felt it was too boring. I enjoy swimming in the Big picture and dipping in and out of every detail along the way. So pleased to be doing this with you! A galaxy of gratitude to you.
The meaning of data; the data of meaning. I'm fascinated to see where this ends up, having faced the exact issue of The Grandmother Problem (specifically how to evaluate something from the humanities realm with a method borrowed from the field of mathematics) in one of my own research papers. Thank you for this most intriguing introduction!
Very excited about this. I think one of the most interesting periods that I hope you will end up talking about in this project is the time when the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was being developed. To vastly oversimplify, you see a physicists following the math, achieving very powerful mathematical models that match the data, and then being forced to do at least a bit of philosophy to try to understand what they had actually made.
If you haven't read it, you might want to check out the superb AEGYPT tetralogy by a writer named John Crowley (most famous as the author of the equally-superb stand-alone novel LITTLE, BIG). The first of the four volumes is called THE SOLITUDES. It's half set in the 1970s, half in the1500s, and is a mainstream historical fantasy novel. The historical parts have a number of characters, but its two main characters are John Dee and Giodorno Bruno. No spoilers, but the latter dies in the tetralogy. Not, however, at its end. Anyway you might enjoy them. They're brilliant books.
(Just landed here via the "I wrote a story for a friend" post & am poking around...)
Julian a large scope! But I am looking forward to it. I think you can break it down to do able.
It's unclear to me what problem you are trying to solve.
Yes, science has its own specialized language which is not amenable to expressing certain aspects of human experience. So what? Music also has its own specialized language (one that is largely opaque to me, not being musical myself). Other domains have their specialized approaches and terminology as well.
Yes, there are many questions within the domain of science, such as the motion of spiral galaxies you mentioned, that remain unexplained by science. Again, so what? No rational scientist claims that science is omniscient, and Nature doesn't always reveal her secrets on a schedule that is convenient for us. Sending poets into space is not going to solve the riddles of spiral galaxies and dark matter.
To the extent modern science has problems -- and I agree with you that it does -- I think these come from neglecting the need for difficult, time-consuming experimentation and data analysis, instead taking the easy path of "expert" opinion, computer models that are not empirically validated, and mathematical speculation. The latter is the problem Sabine Hossenfelder addresses in her "Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray" book.
Science has other problems as well, such as politicization, the reproducibility crisis, and neglect of Feynman's dictum to be honest about the evidence both for and against one's pet theory. But I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with the language of science or the scientific method.
I may not understand everything Julian but I like the direction you’re taking us. Keep going...
I may not understand everything Julian but I like the direction you’re taking us. Keep going...
Last night I had a dream … it felt repetitive and I mostly remember the colors… but at end , there was an odd looking man whose arms were extended in front of him and in one hand he held an egg and in the other a rock. I didn’t understand and woke up immediately.
I typed “an egg and a rock” into the browser and a couple of things came up. An
African proverb but it didn’t resonate and further down the page, an article entitled:
“The egg and the rock.” This .
I knew there would be something to it.
Love this project. I’ve already shared the link with three others who I believe will feel equal enthusiasm.
I just subscribed so I haven't looked through all the comments but if you haven't read it, the paper More is Different by PW Anderson really speaks to some of the issues with reductionism that you touch on: https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf
Late in the game, just joined, still catching up. Excellent endeavour - I'm currently following with interest also David Deutsch (through TokCast podcast) - maybe you're already reading him too and I'll see that as I catch up with the rest of the posts.
Just found your book Julian and I am very much enjoying it so far. When I explain math to my children I tell them, 'There are two roads between what is inside of you and the outside world. Math and Art. You have to use one or both of these roads to get things from the outside in or from the inside out.'
The real tragedy of Bruno's story to me is that it was the Church that killed a man for seeing, killed many men for seeing. The old medieval concept of the Two Swords-the spiritual and the worldly, and the need to keep these two swords out of the same hands, is very helpful here. Our ancestors grappled with a church that had overrun the state and seized its power, we grapple with a state, and its scientific and media handmaidens, that has overrun the church and is making a new one according to its own brainless ideas. Two sides of the same rotten coin. We live in a world of blind men and I can't help but think of the Lord's words to their ancestors so long ago, 'If you said you were blind you would have no sin, but because you say 'I see' your sin remains.'