Really Old Pornographic Art

Sigh.  It's been a week since my last posting.  How quickly this gets away from you.

This one is fun, though.  Nicholas J. Conard, a German archaeologist, found the oldest example of figurative art currently known.  It's 35,000 years old and it is, of course, of a "...voluptuous woman...earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitals."  Read the NY Times article.  It's fun.  And there are pictures.

But forget the porn and go back to the beginning of that paragraph.  It's currently one of the oldest examples of figurative art known in the world.  There is no head - in fact, in place of a head, there is a ring, which suggests it was worn as a necklace or perhaps hung somewhere.  This is definitely not "stick-figure-show-you-where-buffalo-are" art.  It's a link back to the beginning of our understanding of aesthetics, of design, of art.  Thirty-five thousand years ago, back when the Neanderthals were still around, we felt the need to create for creation's sake.  I find that pretty cool.

NPR's On Science correspondent, Rebecca Davis put it best.  "There's something about the discovery of things aesthetic that is far more exciting and inspiring than a tool.  This is where we start linking...I wouldn't say spiritually exactly...but we do start linking in a different way, our own feelings and our own passions, with our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago."

I would say spiritually.  Any connection to the past holds its own ghosts - ghosts that archaeologists spend their entire lives trying to ferret out.  And to have a connection to people from 35 millennia ago, one that gives us clues to beauty, art, society and culture - that is most definitely spiritual.

The Physics of Star Trek

I hope I didn't scare anyone off with the blog title.  I promise I won't be talking about centrifpetal force.  Although, I will point you toward an amazing xkcd comic.  (Just had to get that in there.)

(xkcd.com  Seriously, check it out.)

No, I will be talking about cool things like warp speed and photon torpedoes.  Or rather, Lawrence Krauss will.  He's written two books about the science behind Star Trek and even wrote an article about The Infinite Appeal of Star Trek. (Great, short read.) 

But on to The Physics of Star Trek. The article takes a look at transporters, photon torpedoes, warp drive, even "new life and new civilizations", and asks, according to the laws of physics, if these things are possible.  My favorite was the question on life forms - Krauss talks about silicon-based life forms, instead of carbon-based.  And it leads me to imagine what those creatures would look like and what they would need to be in order to be "living".  This is, of course, what Star Trek is based on - the imagination to create a world that includes Bynars and Tribbles and a whole mess of other ideas about what the future will look like.  

I was less interested in reading about Enterprise's gravitational shields, because they have no basis in reality.  There's no factual science involved in bending matter away from you - it really can't be done.  What can be done (and in fact, has been done) are things like quantum teleportation.  Granted, it's only been done with a single atom, but hey - no one had even thought of a floppy disk as a means to transport information until Spock showed up with one.   

I am, again, stepping all over the article, which really is a fantastic read, but I do want to focus on transporters for a second.  Krauss is asked about "beaming someone up", and he broke down what he would do to transport something.  "So I would do what I do when I surf the Internet—I'd move the bits. I'd scan you and try to get all the information, the bits, which make you a human being."  And then, he'd break you into little 1s and 0s and he'd move you.   

So soon we could all be living in the internet.  How's that for science?

The Future of Science is Art

Jonah Lehrer is one of my favorite science writers.  (He's cute too!  Always helps.)  He uses a language that can excite anyone who reads it.  So when I stumbled on Seed Magazine's The Future of Science is Art, I wasn't all that surprised he had written it.  The article argues exactly what it states - science cannot overcome its current limitations without art.  

As I read it, I pulled so many quotes from the article, that I finally gave up and just want you to read the whole damn thing. (Can I swear on blogs?)  Here it is again. 

But there a few things that I wanted to share, for those with short attention spans.  

Lehrer uses a few artistic examples to point out how art can explain something before it even needs explaining.  To wit: "Samuel Taylor Coleridge, enchanted with opium, was writing poetry about the 'the mind’s self-experience in the act of thinking' long before there was even a science of the mind...Monet’s haystacks appeal to us, in part, because he had a practical understanding of color perception."  Art is essential to understanding what we're even looking for.

We seek to quantify in this world; more and more so as we rely on technologies that understand quantities in ways they could never understand qualities.  Google can show you thousands of websites in a split-second, but you may never get to the one that has the article about light-paintings with the video imbedded. (I found that one after a 2-minute search and only because I remembered I had seen it on Science Friday.)  

But just because it's quantifiable, it doesn't mean it's better.  It doesn't mean it can answer the questions.  As Lehrer begins to dissect physics, he states, "...[its] surreal nature is precisely why it needs the help of artists. The science has progressed beyond our ability to understand it, at least in any literal sense."

This is where Escher can explain something that math never can.  "Relativity" reveals how our minds work more quickly and cleanly than many neuro-scientific studies.  This is where poetic metaphor can unlock ideas that would confound most lay people.  (Or even scientists!  Ever heard the one about our universe being a hole in a block of swiss cheese?  It's mind-boggling.)  This is where James Joyce's Ulysses can capture the essence of humanity more completely than any study of neurons.   

I'm beginning to step on Mr. Lehrer's toes (I need to meet him, so I can finally call him Jonah), so I will refer you back to the article.  But I would like to add something to his words.  Lehrer, too, recalls The Two Cultures (see my previous blog if you have no idea what I'm talking about) and says, more eloquently than I ever could, "The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem that stifles conversation at cocktail parties. Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science’s theories...By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress...Art can make science better."

But science can make art better too.  Science is making art better.  From a purely technological viewpoint, art is being created that could never have been conceived in earlier eras.  But to broaden this idea a little more, let's incorporate science fiction.  Star Trek has just hit theatres, and I would call that a work of art.  How much more amazing is it to know that warp drive and quantum teleportation can, and in fact, have happened? (This will be in my next posting - stay tuned.)  That there is a basis in reality for these things?  For me, it makes Star Trek so much more engaging, and it brings a different kind of beauty to it.  This could be our world someday.  Science could be art. 

"We Don't Know Why"

I've struggled with what to lead with on this very first blog post of mine.  I have a feeling that, just like my life at the current moment, this blog will take a while to fully coalesce into something.  I don't have any idea with what that something is, and I'm becoming more and more okay with not knowing.  There's a reason that "life is a journey" is such an over-used cliche.  

So, I've decided to start with two sentences.  "We don't know why.  That's what fascinates us."  Last Saturday, I attended my very first science conference.  Most of my artist friends are rolling their eyes right now, at least internally, but it was fascinating.  Fifty years ago, C.P. Show wrote a lecture called The Two Cultures (See my play on words there?  Oh, I'm good.) and he spoke about how science and the humanities are diverging.  The two groups don't interact, don't speak, in fact, many times can't even understand each other.  Fifty years later, this is still true.  Perhaps more true.  The conference was an attempt to bring the two closer together.

In my humble opinion, there was more talk about what was wrong with science and the humanities diverging and less talk about what could actually be done about fixing that.  But I blame that on the guerilla style of art that I'm so accustomed to.  You get out there, you figure out what needs doing, you figure out how to do it, and then you do it.  Those last two were oddly missing from the day.  

However (and here's where I get to my point), a number of compelling turns of phrase were thrown out there, one being, "We don't know why.  That's what fascinates us."  (This can be contributed to E.O. Wilson, that brilliant biologist obsessed with ants)  

We don't know why we are alive.  It comes down to that.  And we are fascinated by this idea of why.  We use religion to explain it.  We use science.  We use art.  We use war.  We use love.  We even use death.  

Now, I've just listed six things that seeks to answer "why".  You could list seventeen more without pausing.  But take a good look at my list.  Every one can be seen as an opposite of another.  Wars have been waged over religion.  Religion and science are locked in an epic battle of wills over evolution.  Artists and scientists want to have nothing to do with each other.  And death is the antithesis to even the question.

And yet, we're all after that same elusive answer.

I'm not going to end these posts with a "let's all get along" message, because I would have no idea how to even begin that process.  But if the question "Why are we alive?" fascinates you (and it should), take a moment and see if it can be answered from another perspective.  Even if you don't agree with it, I bet you can understand how someone else would.

I've found two cultures that resonate with me.  Art and science both makes so much sense to me that I can no longer see the divide.  Enter internet and the idea of reaching both cultures in one place, and voila!  My Two Cultures.