20071027

Robert Gauldie


A Newton Suite: Poems and Drawings



Introduction



If a scientist seems an unusual, even bizarre, subject matter for poetry and art it is only because we have been conditioned to see science as being either anti-art, or un-art. Our view of scientists is often of short-sighted men in white coats with funny accents who appear on television to give cartoon authority to breakfast cereals, exercise machines and face creams; bland and boring people who reduce the complex lives of others into bland and boring numbers. There is no doubt that there are scientists who are like that, but there are many who are not. There are many, Isaac Newton included, whose creativity is immense and who create anything but bland and boring science as a result of that creativity. Their science is part of the continuity of human intellectual endeavor of which music, art, poetry, mathematics, and science are only separate facets.

Poetry is not generally supposed to be the language of science. Scientists are supposed to make both scientific statements, and statements about science, in language that is as free as possible of the poetic ambiguities that we attach to imaginative thinking. Fortunately, they don't always succeed. Many of the scientific statements, and even the statements about science, that have had the most far-reaching impact on the thinking of non-scientists, as well as scientists, have been as ambiguous and as difficult to understand as any poem, or painting, or piece of music is ever likely to be. Two such scientific studies that come immediately to mind are Immanuel Kant’s "Critique of Pure Reason", and the initial paper describing analysis of variance by Sir Ronald Fisher. Such ambiguities should not be surprising. The processes through which scientists understand the world well enough to describe it in the logical language of experimentally testable science theories are not as unambiguous as the language of science tries to be. The process of producing science is riddled with ambiguities. The production of scientific ideas is a struggle to bring order into paradoxical and chaotic observations that appear already refracted into apparently theoretically unrelated sequences by the various prior models with which the scientist is already in possession. Experimentally testing scientific ideas against nature is sometimes a little more logical and orderly because the scientist has some measure of control. But not always; the desire to be seen to be right often considerably outweighs the desire to find the truth.

The ambiguities of the process of producing scientific ideas highlight the two basic elements of the scientific process itself: information and knowledge. Information is relatively easy to obtain. It often has in science the added advantage of requiring specialized techniques to obtain. Acquiring information can thus become a desirable, and satisfying, end in itself. Collecting observations under carefully controlled and highly repeatable conditions has the same emotional attraction to many scientists that the playing of the standard repertoire has to many musicians.

Knowledge is another matter. Knowing implies a deeper understanding of some subject than what is implied in having made measurements of that subject. For example, psychologists make many measurements of how people respond to questions, or to associations. The psychologist can use such measurements to place the responses of an individual to questions, or associations, into a particular place in relation to such measurements made on groups of people. However, placement does not require, or imply, any understanding of the mechanisms of how the responses to questions or associations are generated in particular individuals. There is no doubt that such mechanisms exist and that they are the basis of knowledge as opposed to information. Scientists try to express their knowledge of the processes that result in certain patterns of measurements of things, by proposing out of their imagination certain models that express in a systematic way what they imagine to be the true knowledge of the reality behind the measurement. Very often their imagination is wrong; perhaps interesting, even fascinating, but still wrong. Surprisingly, even astonishingly for those convinced that science is more-or-less logical, the wildest flights of this imaginative fancy often prove to be correct. And so, little by little, imagination carries the day against the pedestrian banality of careful number collecting and, thereby, knowledge increases.

At some stage in their increasing knowledge, scientists become uncomfortable with a particular model and begin to look for another. There is a point at which an individual scientist has effectively abandoned a prior model before a new model has been developed to take its place. At this point clear scientific statements of explanation are hardly possible and the scientist moves his thoughts into an ambiguous mixture of the physical and the psychical out of which the creative process develops another, new, model. In this process of development the scientist requires some degree of self-awareness and power of understanding that enables him to think through experiences instead of simply living them. This developmental process is separate from the data. Science develops because scientists develop, not because they collect more data. Personal development underlines the importance of the imagination that must deal with a complex range of signals. For the developing consciousness of the scientist, these signals can be grouped into four categories: physical data, psychical data, faith and fear.

A scientist usually wants to explain the mechanisms whereby things in the real world affect each other. Therefore, observation, or physical data, is a fundamental source of information. There is a catch to this. No one simply collects all the physical data that are available. Some sorting or choosing is always present. The process of sorting or choosing is important to the point to which the data is intended to refer. We know, for example, that Mendel's choice of plants to illustrate his genetic arguments was remarkably felicitous. Given the deductive nature of science, the correct answer is inherent in the correct data set, and therefore one might be expected to know the correct answer in advance before being able to choose that correct data set. In reality, many data sets are often discarded along with their inherent answers until the data set with the right answer is established.

Nonetheless, the right answer (or an acceptable approximation to it) does come from somewhere. Curiously enough, the answer does not come from the old model. Many scientists foster the idea that the fate of an old model is to live on, altered, in the new model. This is only true when a model is still in the process of evolving. Data used to support the old model may also support the new, but usually a model must be by its nature whole in its entirety. For example, Mendelian genetics precludes the entire model of blending inheritance. There can be no equivalent of Hegelian or Marxist dialectic in science. It is embarrassing for me as a child of World War II to admit that science owes more to Nietzsche than it ever did to Hegel or Marx.

Abandoning a scientific model is an intellectual process that is not different from that involved in, for example, the abandoning of the then current "Georgian" model of poetry by T.S. Eliot. Abandonment of a model in either science or poetry opens the sensibilities to the messages of the subconscious that the belief in the model has, by its very certainty, shut out. However, the subconscious source of the messages may be both individualized and yet simultaneously based on a wider, collective psyche. In one sense, new scientific discoveries often run far ahead of what the body of scientific opinion regards as probable. If this were not so, new scientific thought would come to an end. Therefore, the process of scientific discovery must be to some degree individualized. But in a wider sense, scientific discoveries by individuals take place against a certain background of common information and knowledge. It may be possible for a scientist to develop theories that are highly improbable in terms of current information and knowledge, but nonetheless true. However, such theories would be difficult to distinguish from nonsense without some common ground of shared information and knowledge. It is reasonable to treat the scientist as an individual focus of shared information that he transforms in some way into new knowledge that still retains the commonality that enables it to be shared by others.

This kind of collective wisdom (even though it may be incorrect) of scientists is not the same thing as the collective consciousness of Jung. The collective wisdom of scientists is more like a kind of faith that a scientist brings into the process of development of new paradigms. Faith, not only in science, is a response to information that cannot be shared verbally. Shared faith reflects the mechanism by which different (and often physically separated) scientists so often independently discover new models. Fear is another psychical issue with which the scientist must deal. Fear is in many respects a mirror image of faith. An idea must be widely accepted to have the status of a prior model of true knowledge. Rejecting an extant prior model, therefore, involves rejecting the majority view. Rejecting an old model to develop a new model involves unavoidable competition with the majority view that brings with it personal hostility as well as legitimate criticism. Evaluation of ideas in science is a brutal process of conjecture and refutation that can act both to cloak all the human weaknesses of ambition, jealousy, lies and deceit, as well as to illuminate all the humans strengths of courage, humility, generosity and honesty. Creative scientists may have to run a harsh gauntlet.

There are strong similarities between the creative processes of developing new science and the creative processes of developing new music, new art, or any new intellectual development. But, as ever, the intellectual mechanisms of those processes are hidden from us. Although the mechanisms are hidden, their presence is keenly felt. The sequence of events associated with such mechanisms has been seen so many times that it is not surprising that so many symbolic, or philosophical, statements have been developed to describe both the existence of such mechanisms and their nature.

Creativity in science is paid the same lip service in science as it is in many other walks of life. Scientists are often called creative at the end of a long career as a kind of compliment to their eminence, rather like calling a long serving politician public-spirited. Creative young scientists are much more likely to be regarded as a pain in the neck, and not surprisingly. If creativity were the sole criterion of scientific excellence, most scientists would be out of a job. Unfortunately, creativity cannot be taught; if for no other reason than we don't know how it occurs. But we can understand how it feels to be creative, even to be a creative scientist, through art and poetry.

T.S. Eliot wrote that poetry could not teach one how to be something or to believe something, but poetry could give one a sense of what it felt like being a particular something, or what it felt like to believe in something. I believe that poetry has a role to play in relaying the senses of feeling and believing that are embedded in the creative process of scientific discovery. I have used two elements in such a poetical approach. The first element is Sir Isaac Newton who I regard as being the archetypal creative scientist. The second element is the concept of a fold that I regard as symbolizing the fundamental creative process. Both require some explanation.

Maynard Keynes described Sir Isaac Newton as being not so much the first great scientist but the last great magician. Many biographies of Newton have been written including that of Keynes to which the reader is referred for the details of Newton's life. From a creative scientist aspect, the life of Newton can be compressed into a few major elements.

Newton's physics and mathematics inevitably drew him into conflict with the scientific models of his time. More seriously, they also brought him into conflict with the scientific establishment in England. While his discoveries were lauded on the continent and his approach to science strongly proselytized, in England he was attacked. There was no doubt that he had been arrogant and tactless. However, whatever personal issues they may have cloaked, the two strongest lines of attack were that he plagiarized some of his work, and that his mathematical arguments in relation to the infinitesimal calculus were illogical. Both charges were to varying degrees true although there was no question of Newton's contribution as a scientist, or of the practical effectiveness of his mathematical arguments. Newton had great difficulty in dealing with these attacks largely because he lived a dangerous double life concealing the vice of Unitarianism (which could have cost him his life), from his friends and enemies. Newton was a religious fanatic. He believed himself divinely inspired in all things, but with a particular mission to use numerical methods to decode the Book of Revelations. Newton's view of himself as a special person singled out by God for a special mission on earth is entirely consistent with Newton's cavalier treatment of other people's contributions to his area of science, as well as his tactless arrogance. More importantly, it is also reflected in the extraordinary creativity of his contribution to science. Newton had good reason to view himself as an intellectually special person, but in spite of his religious fanaticism, he seems to have lacked sufficient faith to sustain him through the inevitable period of fear and hostility engendered by the creation of his new model of mathematical physics. Newton's fear of his enemies, both real and imagined, came very close to bringing him down. His rescue and rehabilitation as Master of the Mint by his niece allowed him to develop the personal wealth and political power to inflict all the misfortunes on his enemies, both real and perceived, that his considerable intellect could devise. He has been, surprisingly, a moneylender even when he was barely more than a child. A master of the Mint he became an astonishingly wealthy man. The overall picture that we have of Newton is of a person with great creative force but whose character was flawed, indeed cracked, by its own creativity. Newton could do abnormal things, but only by being abnormal, and the creative aspect of that abnormality is what I characterize by the concept of a creative fold.

I believe that the creation of folds represents the basic creative process; the imagination needed to conceptualize simultaneous alternatives, and to imagine simultaneous alternatives where only one previously existed, alternatives that may include information from another place or time. It is in this sense of folding the now with the historical past that changes information into knowledge. Only humans can fold information around in such a way that all of the connectable elements can indeed connect. It is no accident that the most creative and effective scientists are often the most widely knowledgeable about some aspect of the non-scientific riches of man's intellectual history, and that the least creative are often the least knowledgeable and most logical. The collective wisdom of scientists could be seen as an example of a manifold in which many simultaneous alternatives are presented to a group of scientists whose knowledge is wide enough, and whose powers of concentration sufficiently well developed, to entertain all alternatives as simultaneous values. The Gordon conferences of the American Association of the Advancement of Science could be seen as such a manifold in action. I think that such conceptual folds extend through all the creative arts. The greater power of the arts such as music, poetry, art, is that the artist can develop techniques to express all of the alternatives simultaneously. In music and art, this can be done in an obviously non-verbal way. In poetry, although it is verbal in form, it is a verbal form that is designed to evoke what are essentially non-verbal concepts. It is this aspect of poetry that reflects Eliot's observation that poetry allows us to feel what it is like to be something, or what it feels to believe in something. Because scientists are constrained to convert their conceptual redundancies into unambiguous prose, it is particularly apposite to use poetry to evoke the ambiguities of the hidden scientific process of sorting conceptual redundancies.

The poems in this collection centre around Newton and the consistent reappearance of parts of the Newton-like character in other times and places. In this sense the poems are a direct historical fold collapsing time past into the time present. There are other kinds of folds as well. Religious symbols, the sense of destiny and divine guidance, as well as narrowed faith and fear are further folds that must inevitably accompany the creative scientific process.

Folds of another kind can be found in the quotations from other poems. Quotations bend another poet towards oneself. Some poems are such clear windows into another aspect of the same world that a quotation extends the vista of a poem in a way that a re-evocation of that window would never do.

The drawings are another series of folds. They begin with a facsimile of Newton's Principia written in his own hand. Their symbolism and metaphors are very difficult for me to render in other forms other than that in which they appear. Drawings are the voice of the dumb. They are my witness to the sense of bafflement, wonder and fear that comes from contemplating the soaring insight folded into crabbed religiosity that makes Newton a paradigm of the creative scientist.


Six drawings and six poems about Isaac Newton.



 
 
 
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1 Comments:

Blogger Kaz Maslanka said...

I really like this work ... very nice!

Peace,
Kaz

4:20 PM  

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