Science and Aesthetics by Aparthib

Science and Aesthetics

Aparthib

For reference below are the links to the previous nine write-ups in this series:
This essay is an attempt on my part to create a conscious
awareness among readers about the intimate connection between art
and science, a fact that I deeply appreciate and which is often
ignored or unappreciated by even some highly qualified
intellectuals. I am not a scientist, there is no pretense of any
original scientific idea being proposed, but merely an attempt as
a science writer (however amateurish) to cull and present the
wealth of literature that exists which confirm and explain the
nature of this connection between the art and science. In this
essay I would like to touch three different aspects of the art-
science connection. Firstly the correlation of art and science,
i.e. what objective scientific factor maps to specific subjective
notions in art and beauty, secondly the brain's role in artistic
perception, and thirdly the evolutionary origin of the sense of
art and beauty.

It was a cliché to say that beauty (or art in general) defies
definition, it is said to be in the eye of the beholder. Art or
beauty, like  consciousness, is to be perceived, not understood.
But that cliché is now a bit outdated. There is nothing taboo in
science. Definition, a universal one, of art may not exist. But to
insist that art and beauty (more specifically the sense of art
and beauty) is to be perceived, not understood (nor can it be
understood) does not wash anymore in view of the modern insights
of science, the science of evolution to be precise. Definition is
not that fundamental or profound in understanding something we
universally agree exists, like beauty and consciousness. More
fundamental is to understand the scientific basis of the origin
of the existence of those things we agree do exist. Evolutionary
biology (or Evolutionary psychology to be precise) does offer a
fundamental explanation of the emergence of a universal artistic
sense in human species.

Also historically a stereotypical attitude existed among poets
and writers about a supposed contradiction between artistic sense
and science. Here I mean science in a general sense to include
mathematics and logic as well. English poet John Keats quite
paradoxically, accused Newton of ruining the beauty of rainbow by
explaining it with the laws of optics, while famously stating that
"truth is beauty" in another context. Other poets have also made
oblique references to science and logic in their poems, like
Eugene Cummings, Emily Dickinson (e.g "A color stands abroad, on
solitary fields, that science cannot overtake but human nature
feels.."), Wordsworth and many others. Another historical figure
who contributed to  this anti-science myth was Jean-Jacques
Rousseau who seemed to have an almost utter disdain for science.

It is worthwhile to mention the story of Nobel Physicist Feynman 
(in the book  "No Ordinary Genius" by Christopher Sykes) who was
once told by his artist friend holding up a flower: "I as an
artist, see how beautiful the flower is. But you as a scientist,
take it apart, and it becomes dull". To which Feynman responded
that he sees the same beauty that the artist does, but he in
addition sees the inner beauty of the flower as well, seeing how
the tiny cells make up its petals, how the beautiful color of the
flower arose out of an evolutionary adaptation to attract the
insects to pollinate, all of which the artist friend missed.
Another poet, Walt Whitman said in his poem "When I Heard the
Learn'd Astronomer", how he listened to an astronomy lecture and
got tired and bored, walked out of the room, into the mystical
moist night so he could look up in perfect silence at the stars.
An apt yet respectful response to Whitman's poem was given by
Victor Weisskopf in his foreward to the book "Atoms of Silence"
by distinguished astronomer Hubert Reeves saying "Hubert Reeves
knows what the astronomer said; but he also is out there and
looks up with Walt Whitman in silence at the stars" (p-x, "Atoms
of Silence"). Feynman commenting on the poem by Whitman in a
similar way in his famous Feynman Lectures on Physics, said that
he too looked at the stars on a deserted night and felt the awe
and wonder, but his awe and wonder was enhanced much more to
realize that light from the star took millions of years to reach
his eyes, that the stuff out of which his body is made was once
belched out of by a supernova star. It does no harm to the
mystery to know a little more about it, for far more marvelous is
the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Famous science
writer Isaac Asimov writing on "Science and beauty" in the book 
"The Roving Mind" commented on Whitman's poem this way: "Of course
the night sky is beautiful, but is there not a deeper, added
beauty provided by astronomer?", and then goes on to describe in
lyrical paragraphs the awe inspiring wonders of the stars,
galaxies and the universe.

It is sad that so many celebrated literaries in history have
made such hollow and caustic remarks pitting science against
arts and accused the pursuit of scientific truth as ruining
the beauty. We marvel at the beauty of the mighty Ganges river.
Does it diminish our sense of beauty once we reach Gangotri,
the cowhead, the source of the mighty Ganges in the Himalyan
ranges? Not so. Those who have seen it can vouch for the awe and
mystical feelings (both are essential to artistic sensitivity).
that it generates. Seeking for the scientific truth is similar
to seeking the Gangotri. Science seeks the Gangotri of
other beauties in nature, rainbow was one such example. Science
rather deepens the sense of beauty that is already within us.
Because every discovery of the truth pushes the mystery one more
level further. The ultimate mystery still remains and inspires
scientists to go even further, in a constant pursuit of the
Gangotri of the Gangotri and so on, keeping alive an eternal
inspiration and urge for creativity, the two quintessence of
artistic creativity.

Famous British astronomer Sir James Jeans writing on "Science and
Mysticism" in his "The Nature of the Physical World", quotes from
a page on winds and waves in a textbook of hydrodynamics, and
then compares it with the aesthetic experience of actually
watching the sea waves dancing in the sunshine. The remarkable
symmetry in nature which inspired Einstein in his discovery of
the profound laws of relativity and gravitation was to him a
thing of utmost beauty. But Einstein also enjoyed the beauty of
music, in addition to the beauty of nature. He used to play
violin. It is relevant here to mention a quote by Einstein: 
"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas."
as it appeared on May 1, 1935 issue of New York Times.

Nobel Laureate Physicist Dirac also emphasized the
need to appreciate beauty in Physics and credits a sense of
beauty for his remarkable insight into arriving his famous
Dirac's equation for which he received the Nobel Prize.
He claimed that a "keen sense of beauty" enabled
him to discover the wave function for the electron in 1928.
As Dirac famously remarked reminiscing that discovery in the
May 1963 issue of Scientific American magazine:

   "I think there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more
   important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them
   fit experiment. .... If seems that if one is working from the
   point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one
   has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.
   If there is not complete agreement between the result of one's
   work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too
   discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor
   features that are not properly taken into account and that will
   get cleared up with further developments of the theory..."

The Nobel laureate Physicist Chandrasekhar who wrote a 650 page
mathematical tome "The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes" also
wrote a book called "Truth and Beauty" in  which he emphasized
the role of sense of beauty behind the motivation of scientific
thinking. He says in the book that to him art, as seen from the
scientist's point of view, seems to be all the richer for it,
contrary to popular belief that rationality strips art of its
elemental passion. He also drew the parallel between the works of
Shakespeare, Beethoven, Shelley with the beauty inspired approach
of scientists for the search of the truth. So behind all the
profound discoveries lie the motivation from a sheer metaphysical
sense of beauty and mystery of the universe. Our own Sir Jagadish
Chandra Bose of Bangla also stressed this harmony between arts and
science in his essay "Poetry and Science" (Kobita o Biggan), and
much later, poet and mathematician Quazi Motahar Hussein in  his
parallel essay titled "The Poet and the Scientist" (Kobi o
Boigganik). Let me mention yet some more examples.

What can be more apt than a book resulting from the collaboration
of a professor of Englsih and a professor of Phyics to drive
home the intimate harmony between science and arts?

Thomas Vargish and Delo E. Mook, in their book "Inside Modernism:
Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative", write:

   "...we treat the Special and General Theories of Relativity as
   important modernist works of art, the most important for our
   purpose because they contain and express with the highest
   intensity the values that for us define Modernism."

(See http://yalepress.yale.edu/YupBooks/viewbook.asp?isbn=0300076134)

G.N. Watson, one of the most distinguished mathematicians of the
early twentieth century said that some of Ramanujan's
mathematical formulas gave him the same thrill as Michelangelo's
"Day," "Night," "Evening" and "Dawn" in the Medici chapel in the
San Lorenzo in Florence. (From p-545 of Roger Penrose, The
Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of
Physics, Oxford UP, 1989)

Quantum physicist and philosopher David Bohm (Wh recently passed
away) in his paper "On the Relationships of Science and Art" in
the book "Data: Directions in Art, Theory and Aesthetics",
Anthony Hill (ed..1968, London), also emphasizes the unity of art
and science by tracing the parallelism between the artistic
evolution beginning with Monet and Cézanne and going on to the
Cubists and to Mondrian and the development away from
representation and symbolism and toward what may be called 'pure
structure' that took place in mathematics and in science.

As I mentioned earlier art cannot be defined in a simple word.
The existence of art is agreed to by its effect on human mind. If
art is identified by the joy and pleasure that it creates in the
mind and the creativity that goes into its creation, then quite
easily science is an art form and scientists the artists of this
art form. Just as music, painting, poetry are distinct art form,
so is science. It is as baseless to say that science (or scientists)
cannot appreciate arts as it is to say a musician canot
appreciate poetry. A superstring theorist engages in the string
research with an immense sense of appreciation and sensitivity for
beauty. String theory is as elegant if not more as any
sophisticated work of art. The fact of artistic element in
scientific truth is also true for any fundamental science
including molecular biology. It is no wonder that Molecular
Biology professor Bonnie Bassler says in the 17 July 2003, issue
of Nature magazine in response to the question "What' s the one
thing about science that you wish the public understood better?" :

   "That we are not nerds, but artists. That what we do and what
   we are is  exciting, creative and fun."

The scientific basis and connection of art has been explored by a
number of scientists and is also an ongoing pursuit of many
contemporary scientists and philosophers. Many have discovered
some systematic mathematical patterns and structures behind
patterns or objects commonly identified with beauty. This has
given rise to a cross-disciplinary field of "Computational
Aesthetics". One of the early pioneer in computational aesthetics
was the great American mathematician and former president of the
American Mathematical Society (1924-26), George David Birkhoff,
known to physics students for his famous ergodic theorem. He
tried to assign some objectivity to beauty with such notions as
order, complexity and beauty coefficient (or aesthetic measure)
in the late 20's and 30's. He wrote a paper "Mathematical Theory
of Aesthetics and its applications to Poetry and Music",in the
Rice Institute Pamphlet, 1932, 189-342. he followed up with a 
lecture tour explainiung his research. On the basis of his objective
notions he did some calculations to indeed show why snowflakes,
flowers etc are more beautiful than some other not so beautiful
objects. Birkhoff has also worked out specific versions of his
formula for the auditory dimension of poetry, and for melodies.
Later a group of literary theorists in Germany in the fifties,
headed by Max Bense developed the theory of information esthetics
-- a Birkhoff-like model of beauty judgments, formulated in terms
of Claude Shannon' s information theory. Further developments in
informational aesthetics was made in the late sixties by the
psychologist Emmanuel Leeuwenberg in Nijmegen. I am just
mentioning the works of these scientists. Their work involves
elaborate detail and which I cannot do any justice to in this
sketchy overview, nor am I qualified to do so. Readers should
consult appropriate literature in interested in pursuing further.

Alert readers should realize that all such theories of aesthetics
are attempts to correlate or map subjective beauty with some
objective measures. They do not explain why beauty is perceived/
felt in human minds in those objects of beauty possesing those
objective characteristics,i.e the normative aspect of art
appreciation, the "hedonic tone", as Evolutionary Psychologist
Victor Johnston calls it. For that we have to turn to
evolutionary psychology.

Now Unless one believes in soul (despite there being no clear
objective definition or evidence for it's existence), one cannot
avoid confronting the indisputable fact that humans (which
include their brains) are the products of evolution. Evolution,
itself being an emergent effect of the underlying fundamental
laws of nature (Physics to be precise), all human traits and
pursuits like art and music and human affinity for them are
ultimately traceable to the laws of physics itself. But we don't
need (nor is it practicable) to go to that deep level of physics
for understanding every human trait. The language of
evolutionary science suffices for such an understanding. Just as
we can understand what a piece of software does simply by
examining its high level code (visual basic, C etc), without
having to analyze its underlying assembly or machine code),
similarly we can understand human traits in the language of the
laws of evolution (natural selection, mutation, genetic drift,
adaptation etc).

The new science of evolutionary psychology has already made great
strides in understanding a broad range of human emotions and
traits (morality, sexuality..). Since beauty, arts, morality and
virtually all human traits and pursuits are creations "in" human
mind(brain), so if humans (i.e all the organs) are the products
of evolution, so are these traits. They cannot be supernaturally
implanted in human mind from some transcendental world (As a
proponent of divine origin of human existence would suggest). We
can call "love", "beauty of a flower, child, a woman.." all as
divine, sublime, ethereal, but these are mere words to express
human emotional affinity for arts. At the bottom lurks the stark
truth that nothing is too divine or sublime to transcend the laws
of physics. There is no evidence for such transcendence. There is
ample evidence to offer a plausible explanation of the emergence
of not just life but also the emergence of consciousness and
human traits and emotions. Of course the laws of physics can be
viewed (As Einstein did) as divine (Obviously the laws of physics
are not created by human, its the other way around), if one has to
invoke divinity at all, as an ornament of expression.

One particular aspect of human emotion is the urge to appreciate
and attribute beauty to objects (material and non-material)
Beauty is perceived in real objects like flower, gems, or in non-
material objects like poetry, songs. But whatever the object of
the appreciation of beauty, the common aspect of those objects
are they all carry certain information, patterns or arrangement
that convey meanings to human mind, the end result being that
they arouse the pleasure centers of human brain. So the deeper
question is why or how did this mapping (or cause-effect
relationship) between certain information or pattern and the
pleasure center of the brain arise in humans. As I argued earlier
it must be rooted in the evolutionary mechanism. All human traits
are either direct adaptation to the evolutionary selection
pressure, or are the byproducts or side-effects of such adaptive
strategies for survival, the so called spandrel effect. Spandrel
is the term used for the spaces between the pillars of an arch
that is not an intended part of the arch design but is
nevertheless an unavoidable consequence of the arch design.
Spandrel is a special case of expatiation, where a feature
originally selected was reselected to adapt to a different
selection pressure. Spandrels are adaptations with no real
survival values. Artistic sense is viewed by most evolutionary
psychologists as spandrels of evolution.

Incidentally I must remind the readers that survival in
evolutionary terms means propagating the genetic code to
offspring's, it does not refer to the physical survival of a
human (If a human dies after propagating his/her gene, then
evolutionarily that person has survived). A human body is a
temporary repository to store the genetic code which has been
propagating generations after generations over millenia.

That aesthetics has biological root was suggested quite sometime
ago by even a non-scientific literary Frederick Turner in his book
"Natural Classicism", where he expressed his view of aesthetics
as expressions of primordial biological preferences. But the
decisive book based on hard science of evolution that inspired
many evolutionary psychologists was the 1992 book : "The Adapted
Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture" a
collection of essays by many researchers edited by evolutionary
psychologists Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby.
Several books and articles have appeared since then further
giving a firm foundation to this new paradigm of the origin of
art. A widely acclaimed book is Nancy Eiken's "An Evolutionary
Perspective on the Nature of Art" which is inspired by an earlier
book  by E. Dissanayake, "Homo aestheticus: Where art comes from
and why". Readers can read this book online at:

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?action=openPageViewer&docId;=23426455

In the book Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the Arts,
(1999), edited by Brett Cooke and Frederick Turner the editor
remarked that “The evidence is steadily mounting,” and further
remarked in the their introduction, “that if we wish to
understand our profound and long-standing impulse to create and
enjoy art we are well advised to attend to our evolutionary
heritage. . . . Even if art is for art’s sake, it follows that we
seriously consider what that purpose means in Darwinian terms.

A very well-written scholarly article on the evolutionary
adaptive origin of art is: "Is Art an Adaptation? Prospects for
an Evolutionary Perspective on Beauty" by Univ. of Torornto
Philospher Ronald de Sousa published in The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism, Volume 62 Issue 2 Page 109 - June 2004.
Readers can read the article on line at Sousa's site at:

  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Esousa/artfunction/art.htm

In his book "Evolution and Literary Theory", author Joseph Carrol
not only argues for a Darwinian explanation of art(Literaure in
partiular), but also debunks the poststructuralist (Postmodernist)
dogma of textualism of leading exponents, Derrida, Foucault and
their many disciples who claim that the pursuit of objective
insight into anything is an impossible endevour.

Interested readers can check Carroll's website at:

   http://www.umsl.edu/~engjcarr

British astronomer and prolific author John Barrow also has
discussed the evolutionary origins of aesthetic sense in chapters
23 and 24 (Aptly titled "Aesthetics") of his book: "Between
Inner Space and Outer Space". The primitive sense of beauty among
our early hominid ancestors emerged due to its adaptive value. In
a hostile terrain, constantly exposed to predatory threats, the
adaptive trait was to appreciate terrains and land shapes that
favored survival. That may explain whay landscape art became
particularly attractive to humans. Also plain landscape was
favorable to survival, as it was easier to spot predators. So
liking a plain landscape would be evolutionarily more adaptive.

In other words there is a utilitarian basis (evolutionarily
speaking) for artistic likings. Not every individual human being
may be consciously aware of this fact of nature in everyday life.
There is no reason to be. Humans are ultimately programmed
machines, with a remarkable property that *some* (due to spandrel
effect) humans are consciously aware of the fact that they are
programmed machines. Over time that utilitarian basis of artistic
sense may have ceased to exist but the evolutionary instincts of
attraction for art and beauty lingered on like a vestigial organ
and took on its own independent existence as more sophisticated art
appreciation. Also it must be emphasized that we cannot trace
every shade or nuance of art (e.g. surrealism) directly to
specific evolutionary adaptation. As the analogy of spandrel
illustrates there can very well be unintended (but inevitable)
byproducts of evolutionary strategies due to its very trial and
error nature. Artistic sense as a general instinct is what
evolution prescribes in humans. By products of that general
prescription through individual variations (due to mutation or
non-deterministic environmental effect) may arise which may not
be directly adaptive in evolutionary terms and which may be quite
sophisticated. All these show how simple sense of beauty might
have evolved. But we know the complex are built from the simple
by repetition. Barrow also discusses how affinity for certain
shapes and colors could have been evolutionarily more adaptive to
our primitive ancestors leading to the appreciation for flowers,
paintings and other shapes, colors patterns etc. He also mentions
an indirect evidence that musical sense also is rooted in
evolution by citing the the 1975 discovery of two physicists,
Richard Voss and John Clarke, at the University of California,
Berkeley that many classical and modern musical compositions
which are liked by most are closely approximated by what they
call 1/f type spectral noise over a very wide range of
frequencies. It is the universality of such characteristics in
the music of all cultures that point to the common evolutionary
basis of such liking in our evolutionary past. It would be highly
coincidental that all cultures developed a similar musical sense
if it was not due to evolution. Also the fact that human brain is
attuned to certain musical sounds, as modern neurological studies
of the interaction between brain and music has revealed (See the
November '04 issue of scientific American for a recent article on
Music and the Brain by Norman Weinberger) , strongly suggests an
evolutionary root of musical sense, since brain, like any other
organ is also a product of evolution. The fact that even fetuses
within the womb respond to music discriminatively (as cited in
the SciAm article referred to earlier as well as on p-37 of the
book "The Science of Music" by Robin Maconie (1997) lends
additional evidence favoring the genetic (thus evolutionary)
basis of musical sense.

Another research into the connection between brain and arts that
should be mentioned is that by neuroscientists Ramachandran 
(Author of the best seller "Phantoms in the Brain") of the Center
For Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego. In
the paper titled "The science of art" in the Journal of
consciousness Studies, 6/7, 15-41, Ramachandran &; Hirstein detail
their views based on neurological research on various aspects of
art perception viz,(a) The logic of art: whether there are
universal rules or principles; (b) The evolutionary rationale:
why did these rules evolve and why do they have the form that
they do; (c) What is the brain circuitry involved? They arrive at
what they call "Eight laws of aesthetic experience" analogous to
the Buddha’s eightfold path to wisdom).

An important sense of beauty among humans is the appreciation for
beauty of the opposite sex. This is very well understood in
evolutionary terms and extensive literature exists reflecting the
findings and views of many evolutionary psychologists on the
insight into the evolutionary basis of sense of beauty of other
humans (of opposite sex), which we will refer to as sexual beauty.

To put it in one line, the findings of Evol. Psychology is that
sexual beauty is an indicator of good health and genetic fitness,
which is what evolution cares all about. The traits that men
consider beatiful in women are those that indicate female genetic
fitness (like fertility). A leading pioneer is Devendra Singh of
Univ. of Texas at Austin. He has identified waist to hip ratio of
women as one such fitness indicator. When a male identifies a
woman as pretty he may not be consciously aware of the waist to
hip ratio, it is just instinctively wired by evolution.
Evolutionary biologists like David Buss, Desmond Morris, Robin
Baker and many others have identified many such markers of beauty.
Among males one such fitnes marker is facial symmetry which women
instinctively perceives as male beauty. Those who have seen the
documentaries on sex on discovery/TLC (Like the multipart series
of the Huamn sexes, the Science of Sex, The Sex Files) and some
other channels must be familiar with some more of these aesthetic
fitness markers.

The fact that artistic sense or aesthetic sense is rooted in
sexual selection of the brain has been the the recurring theme of
English biologist and science writer Matt Ridley, in his verbose
book "The Red Queen".

More recently in the paper titled "Aesthetic fitness: How sexual
selection shaped artistic virtuosity as a fitness indicator and
aesthetic preferences as mate choice criteria" by psychologist
Geoffrey Miller in the Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts
2(1), 20-25 (Special issue on Evolution, creativity, and
aesthetics) reiterate the biological basis of aesthetics and the
sexual selection factor in particular. Readers can check the
following URL for an online version of the article:

  http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/aesthetic_fitness.htm 

Let me conclude this overview by listng some more relevant books
on this specific topic:

* The Artistic Animal: an Inquiry into the Biological Roots of Art
      Alexander Alland Jr., Anchor Books, 1977

 (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?action=openPageViewer&docId;=1361773)

* Evolutionary Aesthetics, edited by Eckart Voland and Karl Grammer
  Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2003.

* The Bard on the Brain: Understanding the Mind through the Art of
  Shakespeare and the Science of Brain Imaging by Paul Matthews and
  Jeffrey McQuain, Univ. Chicago Press, 2003

* The Biological Foundations of Music edited by Robert Zatorre and
  Isabelle Peretz, New York Academy of Sciences, 2001

* Cross-Pollinations: the Marriage of Science and Poetry
      by Gary Paul Nabhan, Milkweed Press, 2004

* Evolution and Literature - D.A Evans, South Dakota Review.

* Connections: the Geometric Bridge between Art and Science
      by Jay Kappraff, McGraw Hill, 1991

* Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time and the Beauty that Causes Havoc
   by Arthur I. Miller, Basic Books, 2001

* Where mathematics comes from; How the embodied mind brings
    mathematics into being - Lakoff &; Nunez (2000)

* Physics and Music: the Science of Musical Sound
    by Harvey White and Donald White, Holt Rinehart Winston, 1980

* Physics and Psychophysics of Music
     by Juan Roederer, Springer Verlag, 1995

* Physics of Musical Instruments
     by Norman Fletcher and Thomas Rossing, Springer Verlag, 1998