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Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

ScienceOnline 09: History, art, and science

Matt Ford recounts his experiences at ScienceOnline'09, specifically sessions …

The first afternoon session I attended at ScienceOnline'09 was titled "Web and the History of Science." Outside of science, engineering, and tech related things, I have always enjoyed learning about history, and the history of science, engineering, and mathematics has always drawn me in. The session was moderated by a trio of science bloggers: GG (Skulls in the Stars), Brian Switek (Laelaps), and Scicurious (Neurotopia). While all have different backgrounds and specialties, they shared an interest in informing the public not only of what is current in science, but where science came from and how it came to be in the form we see it today.

One big question handled by the trio: "Why is the history of science so important?" In mainstream culture, where scientific literacy is not all that high to begin with, people know even less about the actual history of how various fields of science developed.�

When asked what he personally finds important about science history, Brian said something very much along the lines of how I feel. "So much of what I had been taught about the history of science was wrong," he said. "It is far more interesting and complex than I ever imagined, but people today have a tendency to put their heroes on a pedestal and demonize their enemies." 

So, aside from the fact that many people's grasp on the history of science makes their grasp on the science look good, why blog about it? The presenters laid out three great reasons. 

First, discussing the history of science is an exceptional way to show the humanity of science. Our theories about the world did not just pop into existence; they have been debated and argued over by many great minds, and have been shaped not only by the science, but also the politics and culture of the day. What we have come to accept as science from 100 plus years ago may seem clear today; the process of getting here was rarely smooth.

The second point the chairs argued is that through studying the history of science, we learn how it really works. The arguments can be oddly petty and at times life-destroying (see Newton and Leibniz), yet they're how ideas are beaten from rough thoughts to finely honed, scientifically valid ideas. Finally, by looking at the history we can clearly see two things: that science can be wrong (phrenology), and that it doesn't always work in the short term (caloric theory, luminiferous aether). Given how science communications have changed over the past 400 years, understanding the foundations of science can be a big help in evaluating the usefulness of modern scientific claims.

From history to art

After this fun session, I headed over to another one that caught my eye. I come from a family where my mother is an artist, art collector, and art teacher, and my sister is a very skilled artist. The art talent was used up by the time it got to me. I like some art, but very often I don't always "get it" in ways that others do. That said, I often find art that has an analytical or scientific inspiration to be quite interesting--I guess it's just how my brain is wired.

This session, "Art and science--online and offline," was chaired by an artist/painter named Glendon Mellow. Glendon runs a blog titled The Flying Trilobite, which describes his work as "art in awe of science." The discussion revolved around the question of whether art and science can work together and ultimately help each other. Glendon started the session by showing various pieces of science-related art, breaking them down into five broad categories.

The first, scientific illustration, is where artists attempts to portray how something would look if we saw it with our own eyes today. Examples of this would be illustrations of dinosaurs, or paintings of the land-based predecessors of whales. His next category was science fine art and design, with Felice Frankel or Marc Quinn being examples of this field; the latter created a sculpture of his head, Self, from his own frozen blood*. 

Third was the category of art inspired by scientific subjects, such as an organism or mathematical object. As an example, Glendon used one of my favorite artists, Salvador Dali, specifically his Crucifixion painting. In this piece, he depicts the crucification of Jesus Christ on an unfolded four dimensional hypercube (which would consist of eight three-dimensional cubes). The fourth category was art inspired by scientific techniques, such as optical illusions and other eye fooling tricks.

The final category is the one that I imagine most readers of Ars Technica would be most familiar with: speculative science art and science fiction. No one know what the insides of a warp nacelle looked like before 1987, but the artists working on Star Trek: The Next Generation helped bring the warp core and propulsion system to life.

The discussion then turned to the question of whether art is parasitic when it comes to science, since all the above examples were art using science as an inspiration. This question was resoundingly answered with a no. The most obvious counterexamples are scientific images taken in wavelengths other than visible light that are altered to appear pleasing and beautiful. Microscopy images from biology and material science were mentioned, along with astronomical images. When Hubble snapped the famous image of the Pillars of Creation, the raw data did not look like the image everyone knows now--it required human artistic input to make the famous image from the raw data from the telescope.

That summed up the bulk of my afternoon. I will be back in a few days with my final bits of coverage for the conference. Again, I'd like to express my thanks and gratitude to the organizers and sponsors that made the event possible.

As a note, interested readers can see the opinions and answers the other panel members gave to these and other questions on the session's Wiki page.

* Yes it is as freaky as it sounds, Google will provide you with images.

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