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MELD

                                             July 24, 2012
                                             July 16, 2013


What might a merger of the artistic
and the scientific actually look like?      I've written around this subject...
                                            I don't think I've really tried
    What kind of thing might                addressing this directly before.
    we be talking about?
                                                       AUGUSTE_COMTE
Some different answers:

One is that it might take place purely on a personal
level-- the beatnik scientist surrenders none of the
rigors of science, while doing science, but when outside
of that realm, ranges wider... and from one point of
view, "outside" includes things like seeking funding,
worrying about technical applications...

Or for that matter, thinking up
new research directions.

Call that another: the artistic-impulse
might be confined to the early hypothesis
formation stages, where a creative, intuitive
approach might be welcomed.

   To some extent, this is already true-- physicists
   talk of "elegance", "a beautiful theory"--

   One might wonder if they're stuck on the Rennaissance.
   Try doing analogies from later artistic movements
   to scientific theories... what might an abstract-impressionist
   theory look like?  A punk-deconstructionist theory?


Going after the theory/experiment division:

There might be another style of experiment, a
more free-wheeling, less rigorous version used
to do prelimenary investigations (without
replacing the conventional style, which would
remain essential for confirming initial           Almost necessarily, this
results)... Here, vauge impressions would be      would require a field where
allowed to re-design the experiment on the        experiments are cheap,
fly, a fusion of the creativity of the            or can be cheap.
hypothesis-formation stage and the hands-on
engagement of the experiment.


Another take: while some scientific work has been
automated, much of it is effectively a craft
industry, with a lot of manual improvisation and
repetitive work.  Graduate Students and Post-docs
and such famously provide a lot of the grunt work
to make this happen, and arguably they're not
treated terribly well-- ugly environments are the
rule, austere or cramped/cluttered or both-- Isn't
it possible that some attention to design, to
esthetics, to the attitude of the low-level
workers might yield a more effective science?

Another line: when we talk "first culture",
we don't just mean "science", really we're
after some unified zone composed of the            SCITECH
science/engineering/industrial that doesn't
have have a terribly good name .  A form of
engineering that's more open to the Other
Brain is a lot easier to imagine, isn't it?

   Follow that line in the other direction,
   science, certainly experimental science,    This seems to have
   can be automated, which is the realm of     been happening in
   engineering, which implies anything         bio-medical research in
   that might impact the technical             recent decades.
   could reach into the scientific.
                                               Can theoretical science
                                               be automated?

                                                   Some sort of
                                                   computerized
                                                   evolutionary
                                                   algorithm
                                                   perhaps?





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