What Can Science Learn from the Arts

(Music Playing)

Q: What can Science learn from the arts?

Adam Bly, Founder, Seed Media

So in two ways I think science can learn from the arts, at least two ways. One, very concretely in term of ideas and the other in terms of communication, the idea is being let us say, a little bit more important.

I think, we have reached the point in science right now, at the vanguard of science which I would consider to be theoretical physics in thereof science where the ideas and the questions that were asking have become such that the tools that are disposal in sort of traditionally scientific ways maybe in adequate to achieve the kind of ideas and truths that we seek.

It takes a billion dollar super colliders to move theoretical physics forward now, and that may or may to yield say sheeting results. We will find out next year.

Neuroscience has been built over the last -- that awhile from the bottom up. It is a field that is dominated by bits of research and bits of understanding and is deficient right now is lacking for top down kind of masterful theories, big theories which certainly physics has.

In both cases, the study of consciousness requires that we certainly recognize that we are selves are in the equation as we are studying consciousness which necessarily affects the equation. And in theoretical physics, if you believe strings theory to be true or for at least you assume hypothesis you know, you use string theories or dominant theory right now, you need an 11 dimensional universe. And so devising the experimental conditions and more importantly be able to even intellectually grasp that kind of an idea which our brains as we know them and as we currently use them are in capable of finding link and 11 dimension universe is simply something we do not know how to think about. We also do not know how to talk about. We do not know how to draw.

So, we become bounded limited by our own inadequacies in trying to understand a universe that did not build itself for us. And similarly trying to understand the mind thinking about thinking is no simple task.

And so, there is an important marriage I think in trying to achieve real understanding of these areas of the natural world in marrying both experiments and experience.

There is a wonderful book going to be coming out this fall called Proust was a Neuroscientist by a writer at Seed named Jonah Lehrer. Based on a work that he published in the magazine which basically looks at some major thinkers in the 20th Century from Proust to Susan to Stravinsky to Escoffier to others, and look at how they very much in their expressions of experience in their writings and their music and their paintings, anticipated some of the discoveries in modern neuroscience.

I think that when you look at multiple dimensional universes today, many physicists will sight a 19th Century book by Edwin Abbott called Flatland which sort of very beautifully articulated a world of two dimensions where everything one big sheet of paper and all of us, we are just sorts of sheets of paper on another sheet of paper and based on the size of the sheets of paper and how they interacted, that would determine the hierarchies in society and how he communicated, and then at some point, these two dimensional world hear about, talks about a three-dimensional world and they can even begin to fall them with a three dimensional world would be like, some in some distant space lands somewhere. And that kind of inter play of not been able to being grasp the idea of a three-dimensional universe is quite relevant at theoretical physics and you hope many theoretical physicists today sighting that when Abbott’s work in 19th Century.

I think metaphor and language is critical to not only communicating so this maybe bridges, but the ideas and the communication, it not only critical to communicating scientific ideas outside of science to the people who fund it, and so there is very you know practical reason why science needs new languages, new tools, new visualizations, but also within science just to be able to navigate this very complex ideas.

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services