Went to a wonderful talk at Imperial College yesterday called 'New Perceptions in Time and Space'. It featured three speakers, Professor Colin Cunningham, Dr David Clements and artist Grace Weir.
Their discussion spanned from the history of the telescope and its impact on mankind, to developments in astrophysics and how our understanding of the universe is currently being shaped, and finally to the role that art can play in creating a social discourse for the happenings in science.
I am fascinated by the relationship between science and art, as I think that art at it purest level deals with matters that transcend language. We live in a world of sensation and as such can never encounter a black hole, galaxy or nebula, or the atomic structure of anything, on a physical level; indeed such forms are counter-intuitive to how our senses understand the world. That a rock is solid but is made up mostly of space is counter-intuitive in the extreme (see Richard Dawkins express this idea superbly here). We are aware that such things exist and are structured so, and we also must understand that on a most basic level they will always been unknown to us.
However we can conceive them and attempt to understand them, and art is the perfect conduit in which we can explore the feelings such knowledge evokes. The first language of science is maths, and although beautiful, it is primarily functional. Art has the ability to express emotion and considerations, turning concepts into percepts.
Art alone can express the humanity of science.
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