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Ralph Windle’s Blog on Science & The Arts

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ARTS/SCIENCE ‘ENCOUNTERS’: a Review

VI        ENGAGING REALITY

`It’s no use going back to yesterday´ because I was a different person then’
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll

My final criterion by which to measure the success of the `Encounters´ series has to do with the way it was able - cumulatively and progressively - to move its ‘constituents´ on to embrace some very real, occasionally threatening, issues and controversies. Those ‘constituents´ remember, on my argument, now included participating `scientists´ and ‘artists´, as well as a maturing `public´ audience. What are these `realities´ in the arts/science context?

One such `reality´ is now the pervasive influence of the neurosciences, probing ever more deeply into what we once thought were the private recesses of our brains. The Encounters did not shirk the wonder or the controversy involved.

In The Cellist and the Brain Scientist, Bernard Gregor-Smith, the distinguished cellist of the former Lindsay Quartet, and now of the Dante Quartet, played brilliantly from the Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites and Kol Nidrei, and talked about his approach to music; The Kol Nidrei is a deeply emotional piece, but what, if any, emotions was he experiencing himself while he played?
Psychology Professor, Lawrence Parsons, (of the `Birdsong´ Encounter above) answered `none´ - in going more deeply into his research into what is happening in the brains of professional musicians as they perform. This, perhaps surprisingly, suggested that the performers´ emotion centres of the brain were not engaged during performance, and any `emotional´ gestures were designed to engage the audience. Bernard Gregor- Smith was, at least initially, reluctant to agree; but here, in the presence of great music, participants and public were engaging directly with both the promise and realistic paradoxes of `brain science´.
A similarly engrossing but uncompromising Encounter - Three Ways of Looking at Deception - brought together Professor Sean Spence, a leading neuroscientist with expertise in the study of deception in the brain, together with Holocaust literature specialist, Professor Sue Vice, and philosopher, Dr Paul Faulkner.

Sue Vice described case histories of several notorious, false Holocaust testimonies and asked - is there a special `truth contract´ between writer and reader/audience when it comes to testimony about an historical event or atrocity? Or should the writer be free to `invent´-as in literature- in the search for what he may consider deeper truths? Philosopher Paul Faulkner looked at the logic of the `contract´ established between two people either lying or telling the truth. He suggested that it’s the speaker, not the words, that we `believe´, so we are assessing the person rather than what he says. Professor Spence then described his studies of how the brain’s deception processes can be empirically measured, using the new technology of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. He has been developing complex tests, to be used in legal process of defense against prosecution, which are very much more reliable than ‘truth tests’ and drugs formerly used in police and legal work.

The audience found this juxtaposition of perspectives richly thought-provoking, and were in no doubt that they were involved here in a real, challenging and important debate.
As with Never Mind Climate Change, What About the Planet?
Sheffield University is taking a lead on finding imaginative and daring responses to the threat of Climate Change and Environmental problems. Tony Ryan and Helen Storey’s Wonderland Project provided a striking example of that in the opening Encounter. In this event, one of the country’s leading experts on satellite imagery-based research into the global environment, Professor Shaun Quegan (Applied Mathematics), took a challenging line: is it just Climate Change we have to worry about? Or has the media hijacked the scientific agenda with over-concentration (and over-simplification) on just one marketable issue? Shaun joined forces with David Holmes, a lecturer in Journalism with special interest in the Environment, and a former BBC journalist, to review the coverage in the major newspapers, and to correct some public misapprehensions with a few jaw-dropping facts that are rarely aired in the papers…

Nanotechnology and Post-Modern Culture also confronted presenters and audience alike with uncomfortable and unanswered questions about what nanotechnology is and means for our futures as human beings. Guest speaker Andy Miah (Media,Language and Music, University of the West of Scotland) gave a lively and provocative presentation of contemporary art in Britain which tries to imagine our high-nanotech future, as we (apparently) approach the age of the ‘post-human’. Professor Richard Jones, an eminent physicist specialising in nanotechnology, who is now (in 2010) pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Sheffield University, demystified much of the process and was alert to the effects of the cryptic and apocryphal language some scientists employ, including the computer’s prospects of outperforming human intelligence. Richard’s book, Soft Machines, provides an exceptionally clear and thought-provoking portrait of life at the nano-level, with which a general audience, such as those attending this Encounter, might easily engage.
* * *
So, how do leading researchers in the Arts, Social Sciences and ´Natural´ Sciences define creativity? This was the big question for Creativity in Research, a panel discussion involving professors of Physics, Engineering Materials, Architecture, Law and Music, with a Psychologist in the chair.
Architect Bryan Lawson stirred the controversy by suggesting that there was little `creativity´ involved in visionary architectural design. Training and hard work were more important and `creativity´ was largely a `marketeer’s´ artefact. Physicist Richard Jones and Engineer Shiela MacNeil robustly disagreed and, with others, produced what they knew to be examples of creative thinking in their research. The debate thus evolved into a dichotomy that we might had hardly expected, with an ‘arts’ researcher arguing against, and science researchers arguing for, the importance of creativity in their respective fields. The audience became heatedly involved and the only complaint was lack of time to reach any consensus after this lively debate.
Uses of Metaphor might well be considered an esoteric topic, primarily for arts specialists; but it was the aim of this Encounter to demonstrate how scientific research might be viewed as fundamentally ’ metaphorical’ in approach.
York University Philosophy Professor, Tom Baldwin, argued there was nothing intrinsically special about metaphorical language, only the way we use it. It required the `special contract of understanding´ between speakers (this point echoed the insights of the `Deception´ Encounter).
Sheffield Law Professor and Director of SIBLE, Aurora Plomer, presented instances of research in science which depended on metaphorical ambiguity to produce new scientific insight (she drew examples from the work of Evelyn Fox Keller, and Denis Noble, featured in the final Encounter). If science is a purely objective form of truth, as many still claim, why do so many scientists employ myths and metaphors in their thinking? Italian writer/chemist Primo Levi described himself as a ‘centaur’, a hybrid mixture of artistic and scientific temperaments.

Professor Rachel Falconer (English) discussed his masterly quasi-biography, The Periodic Table, as an example of metaphorical writing which brilliantly bridged the so-called ‘ Arts-Science divide’. Drawing on material presented by Shaun Quegan (in an earlier Encounter), she then suggested how such a metaphorical imagination might be used to contribute to public understanding of Climate Change.
Another lively argument took shape in the discussion period of this Encounter. Countering the panel’s three speakers, Professor Quegan suggested that science research advanced by use of analogy, and not by metaphor. What emerged from this discussion was the idea that both artistic and scientific discovery proceed from an ability to make new lateral connections between different fields of knowledge.
The Sheffield University Arts/Science Encounters 2009 celebrated their Grand Finale with The Music of Life: A Novel View of Darwinism.
This Encounter brought together Professor Denis Noble ( Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford) and Christoph Denoth, a Swiss classical guitarist with whom Prof Noble had had a long-standing working partnership.

His book The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome argues that the Genome Project and related research should not be used in support of a mechanical, anti-humanistic theory of human development. Genes may be inherited, but they remain blueprints only, and the way they are `performed´ remains an individual thing. Hence his main metaphor - think of an orchestra ( the Genome) playing without a conductor, or anyone/anything to start the chain of causation; it just happens! To illustrate his point with wordless eloquence, Christoph Denoth played extracts from some well-beloved pieces for classical guitar by Schubert and others. Both performers discussed how their engagement with the other’s discipline helped to focus and clarify their thoughts about their own chosen metier.

The 2009 Encounters thus ended on a note of affirmation about humanist values informing science and arts research. We could do worse than quote the words from Noble’s polemic, to round off this review.
`We have become transfixed by the great success in explaining protein sequences in terms of encoded DNA sequences. This is a great achievement… but the original question in genetics was not what makes a protein but rather, what makes a dog a dog, a man a man´ (The Music of Life).