Does it Matter to Science if the Universe is Beautiful?

Image: Some rights reserved by Peter Rosbjerg

Yes, of course, beauty is subjective, but does it also serve a functional purpose? I loved how Frank Wilczek at Nautilus linked beauty and science.

Does it matter to a scientist if the world is beautiful?

I don’t think science is walled off from the rest of life. So yes, it matters to me a lot whether the world is beautiful. It’s also a practical question for physicists, engineers, and designers. At the frontiers of physics, we’re dealing with realms of the very small and the very large and the very strange. Everyday experience is not a good guide and experiments can be difficult and expensive. So the source of intuition is not so much from everyday experience or from a massive accumulation of facts, but from feelings about what would give the laws of nature more inner coherence and harmony. My work has been guided by trying to make the laws more beautiful. (emphasis supplied)

The remainder of the question and answer is interesting as well. For example, the interviewer asks if the inherent unpredictability of quantum mechanics violates the Nobel laureate's ideas of beauty. Nautilus also poses this thought experiment: if birds and dogs were capable of abstract reasoning, could they, too, discover the laws of physics? Wilczek:

I think birds would be very good but dogs not so much. The dog’s world is primarily based on smell. Of course, chemical senses can support a rich life of communication and appreciation of food. You smell a madeleine and remember the past. But even if you’re very smart and have a rich social life, it’s hard to get from sensations of smell to Newton’s laws of motion and mechanics. Humans are primarily visual animals, so we have powerful ways of understanding how things move through space. We’re lucky that we can see the planets. That gives us a nice opening into astronomy and understanding gravity.

Now of course anything he might find that "give(s) the laws of nature more inner coherence and harmony" will necessarily be something we humans would understand in the first place, so the I'm not persuaded that "everyday experience" has been set aside. But the notion that (functional) beauty might be a guide to the laws of nature interests me.

Stay curious.™

Wayne

To See the World as It Is

Image: Some rights reserved by Joe Le Merou

Any fool can know. The point is to understand. Albert Einstein

In her latest piece for the New York Times, Maria Konnikova - she spoke at IdeaFestival 2013, incidentally! - describes her journey from experimental psychologist to author and popular writer about the human mind. She uses her experience from both fields to highlight the eternal dance between scientific method and artful transcendence.

Both produce something of value, she emphasizes. The former can be relied upon again and again, but is never quite complete. The latter might be complete, but its fullness might come at the cost of accuracy, or of the truth. In both, she says, there is a "desire to see the world as it is." 

Read The Joy of Psyching Myself Out for yourself.

Stay curious™

Wayne

The Stars in Our Screens

Image: Some rights reserved by Paul Kline

Art is not about communication. It's about communion.

Interactive artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, IdeaFestival 2013

So much of what we learn arrives as that unexpected connection, that realization that something previously known can be re-known in an exciting new way. So it was this morning when I read an Aeon essay on the stars.

The heavens are a preoccupation of mine. I'm forever straining to bring into the view of my binoculars and less often, of an eight-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, the grain and dust of ancient explosions or of that cooling star. As a resource, the dark night sky, which is so important for our rest and for the reproduction of many species - sea turtles come to mind - has in many places faded almost completely from view, replaced by noxious and upward spilling fires of our own making.

I'm saddened by it.

The following words on "alienation," on "remote observation," might take you by surprise, as it did me, because the lens in question is one we modern navigators will immediately recognize. Sky Readers:

Part of the alienation of the astronomer from the objects of study is due to the remarkable technology that allows remote, automated observation. This technology stands between them and the stars as surely as a window separates us from nature while opening it to view. Unlike those who can take a walk in the woods to be close to the things they love, the astronomer can only go hug a telescope. The beauty of far Antares, the red star at the heart of Scorpius, provokes a love forever unrequited. This kind of alienation, formed by peering through newly opened windows at things forever out of reach, is particularly acute for the working astronomer, but it affects all of us who attempt to navigate the virtual world that our interactive screens have brought into view.

It is not just the stars that we have learned to ignore. How many of us remember phone numbers anymore, or email and street addresses? Our memory is becoming ever more externalised, stored on the cloud somewhere – we don’t know where – nor do we care so long as we can access it when we need it. While the information seems mentally nearby, just a few keystrokes will call it up, the stored memory might physically reside on a server 1,000 miles away. We are ever more augmented humans beings, ever more virtualised, enjoying what the philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers call the ‘extended mind’.

How is the extending mind changing us, our sense of our selves, and our sense of our place in the world?

I loved the unexpected comparison of astronomy to the information gathering many of us do everyday through our little windows. In both cases we are brought nearer to a distant story. In both cases we are augmented, "virtualised" as the author says, so that more information may be had. In both cases the dark can be our guide and friend.

Useful mysteries lie there.

Stay curious™

Wayne

"Adaptable" Means Learning How to Unlearn

Image: Some rights reserved by giulia.forsythe

"In an age of disruption the only viable strategy is to adapt" begins this post on strategy for life and career success. Gone are the old and familiar rules, and with it, comfort. We need "to learn how to unlearn."

"The Art of the Shift:"

In an age of disruption the only viable strategy is to adapt. Today things move too quickly to stick with old paradigms once their time has passed.  Once outdated platforms fail to solve new problems, they will be overtaken with blazing speed and we must either make a shift or get left behind.

Yet that’s easier said than done.  As I’ve pointed out before, even Albert Einstein himself was unable to accept a new model for physics, even though he was the one who first brought it about.  Changing our mental model of how the world works is an exceedingly hard thing to do.

...It’s not enough to learn new ideas; we need to unlearn old ones.

Stay curious™

Wayne

Reimagining Education

When asked at one point in the question and answer about how educators could make a real difference, he replied "find other revolutionaries." 

In this September 29 recording, Richard DeMillo talked before an audience of entrepreneurs and educational professionals at the IdeaFestival about the advances in information technology and other trends that are disrupting the higher education marketplace.

DeMillo is the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Professor of Computing and Professor of Management, former John P. Imlay Dean of Computing, and Director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of the influential 2011 book “Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities,” as well as its sequel, “Revolution in Higher Education: How a Small Band of Innovators will Make College Accessible and Affordable."

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer was on hand to introduce DeMillo.

Have a listen.

Stay curious™

Wayne