The Artful Universe Expanded

334 Pages·2005·5.72 MB·English

by  John D. Barrow

The Artful Universe
E X P A N D E D
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The Artful Universe
E X P A N D E D
JOHN D. BARROW
Centre for Mathematical Sciences
University of Cambridge
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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© John D. Barrow 2005
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First published 1995
First published in this Expanded edition 2005
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T. S. Eliot was once climbing into a London taxi when the driver said,
‘You’re T. S. Eliot.’ The astonished poet asked how he knew. ‘Oh’, replied
the driver, ‘I’ve got an eye for a celebrity. Only the other evening I picked
up Bertrand Russell, and I said to him: “Well, Lord Russell, what’s it all
about?” and, do you know, he couldn’t tell me.’
john naughton
Preface
Life, like science and art, is a theory about the world: a theory that in our case
takes bodily form. By a succession of adaptations, most of which are favourable
and none of which are lethal, living things have invested in particular expect-
ations about the future course of their environments. If those theories are
good enough, then life will prosper and multiply; but if they are outmoded by
changing conditions, their embodiments will dwindle and perish.
Science and art are two things most uniquely human. They witness to a desire
to see beyond the seen. They display the crowning successes of the objective and
subjective views of the world. But while they spring from a shared source—the
careful observation of things—they evoke different theories about the world:
what it means, what its inner connections truly are, and what we should judge as
important.
Science and art have diverged. As science became more successful in its quest
to explain the seen by unseen laws of Nature, so art became increasingly subject-
ive, metaphorical, and divorced from realistic representation. It explored other
worlds, leaving science to deal with this one. But there is more to art appreci-
ation than the appreciation of art. The sciences can illuminate our penchant for
artistic creation. Conversely, the growing fascination of scientists with the fruits
of organized complexity in all its forms should draw them towards the creative
arts where there are extraordinary examples of structured intricacy. This book is
an attempt to look with a scientist’s eye at a few things that are usually kept out
of scientific view. Things that are admired rather than explained.
Environmentalism is the flavour of the month. Accordingly, we need to
appreciate how the cosmic environment imprints itself upon our minds and
bodies in ways that shape their structures, their fascinations, and their biases.
Astronomers have revealed that we live in a Universe that is big and old, dark and
cold; yet it could be no other way. For we shall find that these stark facts of
cosmic life are essential if the Universe is to harbour life at all. And from these
life-supporting features flows a particular perception of the Universe that we
may well share with all its perceivers, whoever they may be. We shall delve into
some of the ways in which the structure of the Universe influences the tenor
of our philosophizing and feeling for the Universe; what the unsuspected
viii | Preface
metaphysical impact of the discovery of extraterrestrial life might prove to be;
how the inevitable features of a life-supporting planet filter down to influence
the structure and behaviour of living things; and how the stars and the sky,
overlain by our interpretations of them, have influenced our concepts of time
and determinism. These investigations will take us on down unexpected byways
to consider how our past environment has fashioned concepts of favourable
environments which, in turn, influence our artistic appreciation of landscape.
This will reveal new things about our ambiguous attraction to works of computer
art and lead us to explore an ancient analogy of the problem of whether com-
puter art is truly art. We will also see why natural colours originate, and how
they have helped fashion the colour vision of living things and influenced the
symbolic use of colour in modern art and society. Turning from sight to sound,
we will consider the origins of music. Music has the power to influence human
emotions in ways that other forms of organized complexity do not. In our
explorations of its sources and structure, we shall find tantalizing evidence for a
common factor behind all humanly enjoyable music that links it, and us, to the
overall structure of the environment.
Anthropologists and social scientists have traditionally laid great stress
upon the diversity of human artistic and social activity, but largely ignored the
common features of existence that derive from the universality of our cosmic
environment, and the necessary features that life-supporting environments must
display. Just as science has for too long focused almost exclusively upon the
regularities and simplicities of the world at the expense of the irregularities and
complexities, so our contemplation of the arts has over-indulged the diversities
and unpredictabilities of its forms at the expense of the skein of shared features
that bind us with these forms of complexity to the underlying environment that
the Universe provides. The study of human actions, human minds, and human
creativity has been quick to see complexity, slow to appreciate simplicity. Science,
brought up to reflect on symmetry, has at long last begun to appreciate diversity.
In the fruits of creative activity, science will find the most impressive examples of
organized complexity, whilst offering, in return, a new perspective on the
sources of our senses, our tastes, and the sights and sounds that surround them.
Many people have helped this project, directly or indirectly, knowingly or
unknowingly, at different stages. I would like to thank Mark Bailey, Margaret
Boden, Laura Brown, Guiseppe Caglioti, Paul Davies, John Grandidge, Mike Land,
John Manger, the late John Maynard Smith, Sir William McCrea, Stephen Medcalf,
Jim Message, Leon Mestel, Geoff Miller, Marjorie Mueller, Andrew Murray, Carl
Murray, Keith O’Nions, Mike O’Shea, Tim Roper, Robert Smith, David Streeter,
Debbie Sutcliffe, the late Roger Tayler, Frank Tipler, and Tatyana Tchuvilyova.
Family members are always puzzled by writers, since they appear to be people
for whom writing is harder than it is for others. My wife Elizabeth helped in
Preface | ix
innumerable patient ways; our children, David, Roger, and Louise, watched with
interest, expressed scepticism as to how anyone could call themselves a scientist
yet not play computer games or operate the video recorder, and announced that
they will soon be writing their own books anyway.
Brighton J.D.B.
April 1995