“Then he turned 26”
When asked about which scientist he’d like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said:
Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.
Man, I need to start doing something with my life.
“Science has two goals. One is to order the world, and the second is to extend experience.”
—Niels Bohr
Sounds to me like science and design are trying to achieve the same things.
“How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.”
“I try to approach science with the same incredulity that those in the sciences apply to matters of faith and intuition. My reasoning for this is simple: what science “knows” tends to be in constant flux. We look back at the science and medicine of previous generations and laugh, but we treat our current “state of the art” with reverence.”
“What if, just like STEM is made up of science, technology, engineering and math, we had IDEA, made of intuition, design, emotion, and art—all the things that make us humans feel, well, human? It seems to me that if we use this moment to reassess our values, putting just a little bit of our humanity back into America’s innovation engines will lead to the most meaningful kind of progress.”
I still remember the first time I saw Charles and Ray Eames’ short film Powers of Ten. It was weird because I’d been a fan of the famous designing couple for a few years by then. At the time, I knew them only for their furniture, desperately wanting one of their molded plywood chairs.
But it wasn’t until my freshman year of college in my environmental science class that I was introduced to their film work; the most curious of places, I thought, to discover two of my favorite designers also made films. Either way, the simple 9-minute film amazed me and I’ve often returned to it since that first introduction. And today, October 10, 2010, has been named Powers of Ten day; a way to mark and celebrate the Eames’ wonderful film.
Happy 10/10/10!
I had a few left over elements I made from another project I’m working on and instead of letting them go to waste, I threw them together to make this quick little illustration.
When I was a kid, I turned my room into a laboratory and would ask for test tubes and beakers for Christmas to conduct my science experiences. Though I’ve never lost my interest in the sciences, somewhere I along the way I left science for art. Figures.
“It is quite possible—overwhelmingly probable, one might guess—that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology.”
Scientists claim to have discovered the world’s only immortal animal, a type of jellyfish that can cycle from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again:
The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.
Freaky!
James Cameron on Avatar and Creativity
I loved this quote from James Cameron in his recent TED Talk:
Curiousity is the most powerful thing you own. Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.
Goes right along with what I’ve been thinking about lately. This actually was a very interesting talk on the creative process and how Cameron’s other interests, such as deep sea diving and space missions, changed the way he made movies.
I love this new installation from Tomás Saraceno:
In a triumph of art, science and architecture, Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno’s site-specific exhibit “14 Billion” scales a Black Widow’s web up to magnificent proportions. Currently on display at Stockholm’s Bonniers Konsthall, 14 Billion is an extension of the work he showed at the 2009 Venice Biennale called “Galaxy Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web.”
Not To See
Paul LaFarge on black:
The contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, following Aristotle, remarks that the fact that we see darkness means that our eyes have not only the potential to see, but also the potential not to see. (If we had only the potential to see, we would never have the experience of not-seeing.) This twofold potential, to do and not to do, is not only a feature of our sight, Agamben argues; it is the essence of our humanity: “The greatness—and also the abyss—of human potentiality is that it is first of all potential not to act, potential for darkness.”3 Because we are capable of inaction, we know that we have the ability to act, and also the choice of whether to act or not. Black, the color of not seeing, not doing, is in that sense the color of freedom.No wonder the cool kids wear black.
Completely fascinating.
