This is indeed an interesting topic to study. I wish them
well. Perhaps here in the UK
we might learn something that can be applied to STEM education in the UK? Or perhaps
not! I say this because the study involves the idea that goes by the name of STEM
to STEAM. People who are advocating the use of art in STEM education are having
their say, which is good, for it allows people to reflect on what exactly they
are saying and if it has any legitimacy, which is the matter that I now
address.
Looking at the material already presented to the Expert Committee,
I find that some material that falls into the category of Art-Science Fakes has
already made an appearance, which is why in this blog I ask: Is the National
Academy of Sciences Being Sold Art-Science Fakes?
“…pick your acronyms carefully, lest poetics be used to
expose shallow graves, where lay foul phantoms of inaccuracies, myths and
disingenuous claims, ready to lead astray unwary travellers lost in art’s
romantic mist.”
Let me explain:
In 2013 I became involved at my own expense in a European Commission
initiative called ICT-ART CONNECT, run by a FET-Open project called FET-ART,
which made the claim that it was doing something new – artists and
technologists collaborating. To be a genuine FET Open project, it would have to
be doing something new, otherwise public money would be mis-spent. Having an
academic upbringing, and thus dedicated to understanding the state-of-the-art
before embarking on any research, I started a study to establish the state-of-the-art
in this so-called new area, and found that my suspicions that it was not new
were well founded. Evidently this project was not a true FET project at all,
but just an attempt by artists to lay hands on STEM public funds – no critical
thinking evident! And they had in this process a willing accomplice in the form
of the European Commission’s DG CONNECT – no critical thinking evident there
too! And I have also more recently discovered that one of the partners in the
FET-ART project was subject to a fraud investigation by the European
Commission, the findings of which led the European Commission to suspended all
pending and future payments to the company concerned, which has now, according
to the company’s own web site, ceased trading, as it was, it seems, solely
dependent upon income from European Commission projects.
By mid 2014 it was evident that I needed, partly for ethical
reasons and partly because I was tired of the nonsense that ICT-ART CONNECT had
become, to DISCONNECT from ICT-ART CONNECT. I also then added to my research
into the state-of-the-art, an investigation – it is an investigation – into the
reason why there is a group of artists, and some STEM people, in effect
rewriting history, creating myths and half-truths, and, it would seem, telling
lies. I have uncovered many examples. I will return to this matter at the end.
There must surely be words and phrases that are relevant to
this. What are they?
The problem seems to be centred on a very noisy group who
talk about art-science (mostly actually it is art-technology) that are part of
what I have come to call the Leonardo Cult,
but not uniquely so. They are characterised not just by the making of a lot of
noise, but also by the making of claims that do not stand-up to close
inspection. These claims have inspired the investigative journalist within me,
to undertake the investigations that I mentioned above.
The nonsense of C P Snow is an example of the rubbish that
these people talk. Evidently most of them have not read or understood Snow, or
choose to misrepresent him. Did you know that Snow only mentions artists 4
times in three documents, yet he mentions scientists 113 times and engineers 19
times? I know this because I counted! Big data telling you something? The three
documents I refer to are the 1956 New
Statesman article, the 1959 Rede
Lecture, and the 1963 Second Look.
Artists are supposed to be critical thinkers. This is
another myth. Some artists – a few – are critical thinkers, but it seems the
vast majority of those in the Leonardo
Cult do not engage in critical thinking, otherwise they would have
discovered that Snow had an agenda, a technocratic one, and was willing to talk
any nonsense to further his agenda which he reveals in another book called Science and Government, where he praises
the leadership of the Soviet Union. Snow’s belief in technocracy probably links
back to Cambridge
in the 1930s – a hot bed of idealist communist/socialist thinking. They were
taken in by Stalin – some people are easily fooled, especially, I have
discovered, STEM people. This is another long story, but another scientist,
also at Cambridge
in the 1930s, Conrad Waddington, sets the scene well, for he wrote a book in
which he announced that the future was totalitarian government, and that the
Soviet and Nazi totalitarian systems should be analysed! And so on. The matter
gets fuller consideration in my forthcoming book, 366 (see below).
People who know about painting in the 20th
century will know that new scientific thought (particularly quantum mechanics)
had an influence on art movements. The Surrealists are the most obvious case.
The influence of science and technology was part of several artists’ milieu.
This sometimes also led to critique of science (e.g. Wolfgang Paalen). Today
there is still a group of artists – usually more interesting and quieter than
the noisy lot – who still engage in critique. But generally they stay away from
the STEM establishment for obvious reasons. Some of them also share my concerns
about those that make all the noise! These concerns have turned out to be well
founded.
One of my concerns about involving artists from the noisy Leonardo Sect in STEM education is that
they will just perpetuate the myths and misunderstanding that surround Snow,
and contribute to the ignorance that already stalks the domain of STEM – people
who know a lot about very little. Whereas,
I would suggest, a social scientist might well use the case of Snow as an
exercise in critical thinking and writing, showing the importance of not
accepting what you are told, of using original source material, of extending
the search to other material, and of developing arguments based on this
material. I learned to do this by working with social scientist, not artists.
Evidently C P Snow was also ignorant of the social sciences, for which he had
to make an apology in the Second Look.
His ignorance on this matter is staggering, but not surprising, because, as he
said himself: “I am the prisoner of my English upbringing, conditioned to be
suspicious of any but the established intellectual disciplines, unreservedly at
home only with the hard subjects.”
The same ignorance is evident in DG CONNECT – hence STARTS!
If
you care to look in the documentation published so far by the National Academy of
Sciences on their web site, there is in a document pga_175504.pdf available on
the link called
Program Book for the Committee Meeting held July 2016. In this document
there is reference to a research paper called
Arts Foster Scientific Success. Do they?
I
came across this particular paper in 2016 when I was working on a new book (366 – A Scriptovisual Composition Unknown). My
initial reaction to this paper was that the research method is flawed because
it is based on biased material (obituary notices, biographies, autobiographies,
and biographical memoirs) and the bias inherent in this material, and possibly
also the bias on the part of the researchers, has not been taken into account.
Social Scientists will understand what I am talking about. On checking (I have
learned that this is essential) some of the reported facts, I found several errors
(inaccuracies/biased statements/mis-quotes?):
First,
the Royal Society is not a membership based organisation. It is an endowed
society that elects eminent people from the world of STEM to the status of
Fellow. A minor error perhaps, but it illustrates the lack of rigour that
permeates the paper.
Second,
there is in the paper a Table (No. 2) with the title: Scientists Who Publicly Exhibited and/or Sold Visual Art or Sculpture,
Published Works of Fiction, or Publicly Performed Musical Pieces. In this
table CP Snow is listed (as someone who published works of fiction) followed
by (RS), indicating that he was, (according to the paper) a member(!) of the
Royal Society. I suppose this means Fellow of the Royal Society as there are no
members of the Royal Society, and becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society is a
mark of outstanding scientific success.
I
checked the List of Fellows of the Royal Society 1660 – 2007. This is easy
enough to do as it is in the public domain and available on the Royal Society’s
web site. C P Snow’s name does not appear. This is because he never made any
contribution to science to warrant election to fellowship. Actually the
contrary applies – he was a failed scientist who gave up science in the 1930s. The
reasons for this relate to the publication of (at the time) widely celebrated
scientific results that had to be withdrawn because they were wrong. This is a
matter of historical record, which also shows that C P Snow then pursued a
career as a civil servant and novelist, later becoming a minister in a Labour
Government. So he was not a scientist with an arts avocation and arts did not
foster his scientific success, because he had no success. Probably he was a
novelist with a science avocation. Already you see that some of the evidence
for the argument that arts foster scientific success is flawed. But there is
more!
Conrad
Waddington’s name also appears in this Table 2. He was a Fellow of the Royal
Society, but, having examined the material that was used in the research, I can
find no evidence that he was an artist who publicly exhibited or sold visual
art or sculpture as the Table states. I searched the biographical memoir of
Waddington that was published in the Royal Society’s Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (Vol 23, Nov
1977, pp 575-622). I looked electronically for the word painter or painters.
There is no reference to the word painter being applied to Waddington, just the
word painters, as in other people, not Waddington. The word artist also appears
several times in the biographical memoir, but not with reference to Waddington.
Waddington
did write a book however: Behind
Appearance. It is a book about the relationship between painting and
science in the 20th century. It is not though, as is stated in the paper
Arts Foster Scientific Success,
linked to the idea of “that which has not been drawn has not been seen.” Neither
does Waddington, as is reported in the National Academy of Sciences document
pga_175504.pdf, “assert(ed) that the hands-on requirements of science and art
profoundly connect(ed) the two domains.” The text from Waddington’s book that
appears in pga_175504.pdf, is significantly truncated. It is part of a very
long argument in Waddington’s book, extending over 35 pages, that deals with
the characteristics of the new painting, e.g. Abstract Expressionism. This
quoted and truncated text is part of a quite long sub-section of that 35 page
long argument, that is dealing with the matter of gesture and calligraphy, in
the context of the new art. The text in question starts: “There is a peculiar
affinity, but also an important difference, between the experimental scientists
and the painter in their experience of coaxing parts of the material world …”
You will note that “but also an important difference” has been excluded from
the quote appearing in pga_175504.pdf.
Waddington’s
book is actually a very well researched piece of work, and in it Waddington
demonstrates that there is no clear or simple relationship between the
paintings he addresses and scientific thought, and thus no clear conclusions
can be drawn. This is because the relationship is in fact a very complex one,
as anyone who understands how artists think would know from knowledge and experience.
This well researched piece of work also stands in sharp contrast with what
scientists today produce. I will return to the matter of Erik R Kandel and
Arthur I Miller later.
In
the paper Arts Foster Scientific Success
there is another quote of Waddington, this time from a different book with the
title Biology and the History of the
Future. The paper says that: “For Waddington, understanding how art was
made was a way to understand his own field of embryology, because, ‘an art
object is always an instruction, to do or to experience, not a piece of information;
and living things are organised instructions, not organised information.’ What
Waddington actually said was: “Your silence, Cage, is an instruction to listen.
An art object is always an instruction, to do or to experience, not a piece of
information; and living things are organised instructions, not organised
information.” This is actually part of a dialog with John Cage, and others,
about The End of Faustian Man and the
Limits to Progress and in this there is discussion about silence. This is part
of a discussion with the title Towards a
Post-Industrial World. If you think that the statement “for Waddington
understanding how art was made was a way to understand his own field of
embryology,” is far removed from the content of the discussion reported in Biology and the History of the Future,
you are right – there is no connection.
The name Richard Feynman also appears in Table 2 of Arts Foster Scientific Success. I have
yet to fully research Feynman. It is known that he did engage in the visual
arts, but so far, what I have discovered is that he did so later in life, after
he had become a successful scientist. If this is the case then art did not
foster his scientific success! Perhaps science fostered his artistic success?
Feynman also states in the book Surely You’re
Joking Mr Feynman, that some artists are fakes. This is true! What would he
have said about modern STEM people involved with the arts?
All of the above documents are in the public domain so can
be checked. I wonder if the National Academy of Sciences are checking?
Is the paper Arts
Foster Scientific Success just an isolated case? Sadly no! The European
Commission and the STARTS initiative is a gold mine of nonsense, inaccurate
statements, half-truths, falsehoods, and so forth. Watch any of the online
recordings of the discussion sessions that have been held – no critical
thinking evident – and they leave one asking this question: what illegal
substances did they all take that provided the stimulus to spend 45-60 minute talking
utter nonsense? Or is it the intoxicating aroma of money driving people to
START talking nonsense?
There is more to come too in this rather stupid STARTS
initiative which is more like a circus act – of clowns! Soon the affects of
VERTIGO will be felt, and sensations of whirling and loss of balance,
associated particularly with looking down from a great height, way out of touch
with reality, will be felt, as organisations like the V&A in London, START
talking nonsense too. Did I not say that people should pick their acronyms
carefully lest poetics be used to expose shallow graves, where lay foul
phantoms of inaccuracies, myths and disingenuous claims, ready to lead astray
unwary travellers lost in art’s romantic mist? Expect much of this, as the
giddiness of VERTIGO affects DISCONNECTED minds.
And what of Leonardo? Once just an artist and an engineer
(but not in the modern sense), because painting went together with engineering
as part of the mechanical arts, he has become not just an artist and engineer,
but also a scientist, a mathematician, an architect, an anatomist, an inventor,
a designer, and (why not add something else as well?). Why is this so? Is it because
new convincing evidence has come to light which proves the case? Or are there
other reasons why history is being rewritten? They say that no one like Leonardo
has ever existed, not before or since. Perhaps this is because this Leonardo is
a myth. What next then for Leonardo? Perhaps we will hear about his miracles –
how he healed the sick, walked on water, fed the 5000, raised people from the
dead? Perhaps soon there will be a meeting of the Leonard Cult to consider and decide upon his divinity?
This now brings me back to Kandel and Miller! At this moment
in time, as I finish work on 366, in
which these two characters make a brief appearance, I begin to turn my
attention to my next work which will be called Art-Science Fakes: An Epistolary Tale of Scientific Reduction to
Ignorance. This is what we are now seeing – a scientific reduction to
ignorance. Surely you did not think that this would go unnoticed and that that
you would not become the subject of artistic enquiry? You can see what I have
done to the European Commission’s DG CONNECT and their art-science lovers. My alteration, as I call it in the Preface
to the book about STARTS and the artistic voices that DG CONNECT silenced, is
just a warm-up exercise. Now that I wield both the pen and the brush
simultaneously, who can tell what will come next! The answer is 366. Then will come Art-Science Fakes: An Epistolary Tale of Scientific Reduction to
Ignorance. Then the world will START to understand just what is going on
and why. Something to do with what John Berger stated in …
And then too, those who learn that this STARTS nonsense is a
worst practice case study, will begin to understand that they can use STARTS as
a pointer towards what not to do, and then to do something different –
something that DG CONNECT will not be able to do. We are back now to my
state-of-the-art study. Go armed with knowledge, and you will begin to see what
needs to be done – not STARTS for sure, which will, in the end, just have to
contribute further to that growing collection of art-science fakes. Then shall the world laugh at the ignorance,
incompetence and arrogance of DG CONNECT, for their true nature will be
revealed to those who care to see – the Chinese for example! Are you listening
to me in that ancient culture that became technologically advanced while Europe
in medieval mud dwelt, in that longest ever continuously existing civilisation,
in that country whose destiny is to eclipse the Europe Union economically,
technologically and scientifically, in that city known as Beijing? Elsewhere
too? Perhaps even in Washington DC, where fiduciary responsibilities and due diligence
should, I would expect, be taken far more seriously than in that little city of
golden stars, sitting in a rainy country called Belgium.
