Blog 10

Part 1)

Jonah Lehrer’s main argument is that traditional science has taken us as far as it can, and we need to rely on a more holistic perspective which incorporates art. He points out that we only seem to increase the number of mysteries that we have the more we learn about the world around us. Lehrer uses Niels Bohr’s observation of matter as an example of how art can help us further our understanding of science. To be fair, Lehrer makes a valid point that in that very specific instance, when Bohr was attempting to model the shape of an atom,  art was a useful tool. However, I fundamentally disagree that science has served its purpose, like an obsolete phone to be discarded in favor of painting and sculpting. Although a holistic perspective is important, I think it is a wonderful thing that we disprove wrong information, even if it is a commonly accepted belief. I take issue with his second to last paragraph in particular: “Right now, science is widely considered our sole source of Truth, with a capital “T.” Everything that can’t be stated in the language of acronyms and equations risks being disregarded as a pretty fiction, which is the opposite of scientific fact.” Not being objective truth does not make art any less valid, and indeed it brings to light bias on the part of Lehrer that makes it difficult to accept the rest of the passage at face value.


Part 2)

  • Heisenberg uncertainty principle: A rule in quantum mechanics that states that there is a fundamental limit to how well you can simultaneously know the position and momentum (where momentum is classically mass times velocity) of a particle.  This means if you know the position very precisely, you can only have limited information about its momentum and vice-versa.Bridging principle: How a pair of concepts are connected but also focused on separately, containing similarities and differences between the two.

    Reductionism: The practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation

    Synapse: A junction between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter.

    Epiphenomenon: A secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process.

    Holistic perspective: A perspective in which many different factors are taken into account to generate a picture of the whole

    Metaphor: A thing regarded as being representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.

    Bolster: To support or strengthen

    Qualia: The internal and subjective component of sense perceptions


Part 3)

Virginia Woolf was an English writer who is considered one of the most important modernist authors of the 20th century. Leher quotes her in the following sentence:

“As Virginia Woolf put it, the task of the novelist is to “examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day…[tracing] the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness.”

Brain Greene is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist. Lehrer quotes Greene, in the following sentence “As the string theorist Brian Greene recently wrote, the arts have the ability to “give a vigorous shake to our sense of what’s real,” jarring the scientific imagination into imagining new things.”

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