"Symmetry"

R.Ince: In only 4.6 billion years, the Sun will swell into a "red giant" engulfing our own planet Earth, Mercury and Venus. So let's enjoy these last few moments we have together...

Hello, on my left is the scientific advisor for the film "Sunshine", in which a group of astronauts go into space to send a bomb into the middle of the Sun to "restart" it. Yeah... and yet somehow he's a professor; I take most things he says with a pinch of salt - Brian Cox.

B.Cox: And on my right is a man who recently failed his Turing test* - Robin Ince.

Now... occasionally it's said that The Infinite Monkey Cage is unnecessarily elitist so to show that that isn't the case if you're not familiar with the Turing test it's prefigured in Descartes' great 1668 treatise Discourse on the Method so just dig your copy out and have a look.

R.Ince: So today we're going to be looking at the symmetry of the bond and visualising symmetries between the honeybees and bumblebees. "Hey honeybees like pentagonal symmetry but bumblebees like mirror symmetry - what's all that about??"

B.Cox: In other words, we'll be looking at the importance of symmetry. Why does symmetry underline everything from mating to the fundamental laws that govern the Universe? As usual, we're joined by three guests.

R.Ince: Our first guest remains our only guest who is a self-declared wizard.

Now, to the audience in the studio - which one could it be?

 Clean-shaven man number one

Clean-shaven man number two, or

The man with the enormous beard.

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* The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior, equivalent to or indistinguishable from, that of an actual human. 

Is Philosophy Dead? -p1

Stephen Hawking said "Philosophy is dead"  [citation needed]

Matt Parker:

For a long time now in the play-out of subjects Physics and Biology have been beating out Religion - you know, taking his lunch money, wedging his holy underwear, that kind of thing. But Physics has gotten bored, wondered off and just slapped Philosophy. Stephen Hawking, tired of just giving reality burns to Religion, has decided Philosophy is fair game. Big mistake, Physics. Because behind Philosophy is his big cousin, Mathematics. Too few people realize that Mathematics is actually a subset of Philosophy. Both subjects start with a series of axioms and then work out what they can logically deduce through thought experiment. The only difference between Maths and Philosophy is that Maths is alarmingly useful.
Everything else is exactly the same, from the beards right through to the super social skills.

Because Physics, as we know, deals with contingent facts. They're facts that are true, but didn't have to be true. The speed of light is 300.000 km/s, but it didn't have to be so. Maths deals with necessary facts. Facts that are true and had no other choice but to be so. 7 is a prime number and there's no other option. This is why every couple hundred years Physics theories get overturned but Mathematical theorems don't. Thousands from years from now when you're going faster than the speed of light on your way to work you're still not going to pick up a newspaper that says "7 no longer a prime number. Now 8 is."

And Physics, frankly, if you start dissing Philosophy, you're effectively colliding hadrons with your own foot. You need Mathematical logic to express your ideas. Maths wouldn't notice the absence of Physics, but let's say Physics deal with a trial separation from Maths. You can't derive Maxwell's equations using interpretative dance! You can't refract and focus X-Rays using a densely written haiku! You can't program a computer using hilarious pictures of cats! ... Ok, I'll give you the last one.

"The Origin of Life"

We asked the audience a question. What is your theory of how it all began?

"A Mommy Universe and a Daddy Universe loved each other very much"

"Chemistry vs. Physics"

We asked our audience: Chemistry or Physics? WHY?

Martin: "Chemistry! Because if it smells it's chemistry, if it moves it's biology and if it doesn't work it's physics."

Ellie: "Physics. With physics things can only get better. In chemistry if something doesn't work you can't pretend that it does by sticking the word dark in front of it."

"A balanced programme on balance"

- Is there any sense in which if you're communicating Darwin's theory you should take any account at all of the fact that there are people - and they could be a majority - who believe that the world began 6.000 years ago and everything appeared as is? How do you deal with that?

- In the U.S. actually it is a majority. About 55% people disbelieve to some degree with the theory of evolution. As I said to my american publisher, I don't mind if it was 150.000.000 creationists burning my books as long as they buy them first.

Peentru că nu mai pot face nimic productiv, o dau pe glume răsuflate dar geniale:

http://xkcd.com/149/

"I don't really like science."

O conversaţie/paralelă între 6 oameni, 3 din domeniul artistic şi 3 din domeniul ştiinţific. Apar şi nişte comentarii personale pe acolo.

- So the point is that an aesthetic sense about the Universe is useful.

- "Art vs. Science" is about human imagination and scientists, they have to use their human imagination to get something right, whereas artists only have to get as far as having Brian Sewell going "That's very pretty". So - we put ourselves under less stress.

- Yeah, but it's really difficult to get Brian Sewell to say that, so that shows how tough art is.

- The word "truth" in both schemes means such different things. Cause truth in art is so blurry and vague; so Hamlet is a play which people consider to be very true about the human condition, but it's completely fictional - about a made-up person saying made-up things in a made-up situation. And yet we consider that made-up thing to be enlightening our actual lives; and that's how art works. So many paintings are mere dots, or they're blurry and because of the way the brain processes them they seem to say something to us in a truthful way. In science it's the exact opposite.

- Well I'm not sure that is though, actually. Just like I've been saying earlier on, "Is this the final theory?" - it's not! We know it's not the final theory cause we know there are things wrong with it. And so science is about creating fictions which happen to give us one way of predicting what's gonna happen.

- So you create the thing, the fiction, but then you test it?

- Right.

- But then it's not fiction anymore.

- It's fiction on the level that we don't really think, at least we certainly don't think at the moment that this is really how the Universe operates.

- Hang on, hang on. I'm old fashioned enough to believe in objective reality, I'm sorry. I agree that a lot of the methods and ways of thinking are the same; in a way art is a form of communication and can be used to communicate about science as well. But the thing with science is we continue pushing those imaginative and intellectual bits of our brains against this really confusing and counter-intuitive Universe where we can do experiments. We didn't discuss the experiment before, but that's the core of it really: the ideas can be the same. It's the fact that with one set of ideas you can go out and build an enormous machine and test to see if they've got anything to do with objective reality.

- And this is important, isn't it? With a scientific theory the judge, in some sense of its beauty and its success, is that you can test it against nature. Whereas what you said about Hamlet - it's a test against, i suppose, opinion. Is there an objective measure of worth in art? Or is it purely a statistical essence; a long as a lot of people agree that this is a great work then it's a great work... You can't measure whether something 's good art or not.

- Actually I think that's exactly right; I think it's subjective. I could think something is the best art that was ever made, that everyone else on the planet thought was terrible.

[I think this is a rather sad quality. And it's precisely why there are all these "modern" artists who bug the hell out of me. I actually appreciate modern art more than classical. I'd probably take some abstract sculpture over Michaelangelo, but I'm annoyed by all these people who do... nothing/random things, call it art and then complain how others simply don't "get" it. 

When appreciation of something is subjective, you COULD do just about any shit and somewhere in the world there'll be one sorry sap who thinks what a great artist you are. Because the world is an eclectic group of people... different people, with different lives, experience and opinions out there and you just have to name a random thing and there's bound to be a fan club somewhere. (there's a market for a magazine called - brace yourselves - "Walking"). 

 Returning to the point - you could take a piss on a canvas (I'm actually pretty sure it's been done) and some people will appreciate it. And it's not even odd: if you look at the pornographic/sexual deviances present in the world (and I'd like to mention a definition for deviance: it's not "sick" but rather "differs from the majority") the point I'm trying to make will be obvious. There are people out there who prefer getting off to scatophillia, so it's doubtful there isn't a single soul who'd appreciate the special "piss on canvas with pride". Sure there is. Not a lot of people, though... still: enough to make me an "artist". So how can I appreciate one who introduces himself or refers to himself as an "artist" before knowing more about him - what makes him tick? Why is he doing whatever he's doing? etc. I've come to associate being an "artist" with being "too lazy to get a proper job" and I feel most (most! not all) should consider their art a "hobby" rather than a job; this is the judgmental stereotype I'm not even fighting against. 

 Why? Because I'm pretty sure most of them are like that. Sure, they feel they have a calling, they feel some things awaken deeply rooted feelings which they simply must get out, yet... this just in: ALL of us are like that. People tend to think way more than they should that they're special, different, their problems are unique, none feel the way they do. And even though it looks like I'm ranting - I'm not. The previous statement is an accepted fact; one I've had to face (and accept) myself, in troubled times no less. Wasn't easy, but it sure made my days lighter once I've embraced it. (I will come back to this in one of the next blog entries)

*I admit primarily thinking about painters while writing this down, but I could mix other professions in.]

And I could be the only person; but because it's subjective and that's the art that speaks to me I'm absolutely right and noone could ever contradict that. Comedy is a perfect example, whether you consider it an art form or not. You can be in a room with 3.000 people watching a comedian and if you're the one person not laughing you will go out and say to someone "yeah, he wasn't funny". You won't go "He was funny to everyone but me". They're all wrong. He wasn't funny.

- There didn't use to be this divide. There wasn't a divide between science and art

- No, cause religion was answering these questions and art was tangled up in religion as well.

- When did this divide occur? Cause I think "human imagination" - that's what this is about. And when people get worried about "should I like science or art?" I go "No, you should just be interested in the world!" I meet more scientists who are also interested in art, whereas I quite often meet art peple who go "I don't really like science.".