Sunday, 20 September 2009
Friday, 11 September 2009
why i'm interested in 19th century right now
Heres some first thoughts on why I'm interested in the 19th Century, Science, Victorian Art and then start twittering on Nanotechnology and Genetics
I did my degree in History and History of Art, after originally studying Chemistry. At the time I was concerned that the future was heading towards the industrialisation of the world and increasing commericalisation. I switched to Art History to learn about Surrealism, Leonardo, Renoir and Photography and for a few years my scientific interest was submerged. Gradually i reawakened my interest and now revel in the connectedness of science, from genetics to quantum physics. I still dread the dominance of science by business : the promethean implications of modern possibility when linked to human weakness.
At the end of the 19th century there seems to have been a general respect for Science, as well as a mystery and risk about it. The early science fiction of Jules Verne was linked to the adventure fiction of Conan-Doyle and Rider Haggard. Writing about things that seemed "incredible". Scientists were independent and focussed on finding out "why". If they received an income it was as a lecturer, but there was a competitiveness about them and a desire for glory and recognition. Its also hard now to imagine the mystery of finding out the interconnectedness of the infinitely small. Atomic Particles, Rays, Chemical Elements were all being investigated with a care and attention to detail.
Theres such a breadth to what is encompassed in 19th Century Science and the eminent figures themselves bridge disciplines They explored technique in the same way that a traveller would a landscape. Painters such as Cezanne would look for new ways to make pigment (philip ball's book on Colour) . Darwin would grow seeds in his potting shed. Travel had broadened the mind, Darwin, Dickens, Stevenson, Gauguin,
Subjects weren't dumbed down. daily life was influenced by the commercial product - wrights coal tar soap, mass produced goods available, train travel. The range of possibility continued for year.
Then the interest in what it was possible to discover, either by endless repetitive experiment - Darwin, or using new techniques in chemistry and academic discipline in measurement in physics - Kelvin. engineered Microscopes, Vacuums in glass tubes. Electricity. i suppose im less interested in the mathematical reasoning of Einstein and the philosophic logic of Russell. The real mountain the late victorians climbed was to take on the world around them and measure it in the lab.
So back to what fascinates and inspires me. Could Marconi have imagined the world connected by mobile phones carried everywhere by 2 billion people?. The first recording of sound by Alexander Bell has now transformed into music on demand. The electronic word has replaced the hand-written text and notebooks the 19th Century genius's used. But theres also a greater disconnect. We cant conceive the historic innnovations that have gone in to transforming a few rare minerals and metals into minute electronic components, being manufactured in world wide supply chains controlled by computer networks themselves built of millions of electronic machines. When you take this back to a 19th century starting point, you wonder how such evolution and revolution comes about.
But has art improved in the same way? I remember the Art History lectures on Mannerism as an artistic evolution of the Renaissance Painting. The theory that as the technique gets popularised, so the subject matter and content become more bizarre and off-key. I wonder: Has the direction of travel be positive for Music, Painting and Literature in the last 100 years? Im not convinced. The Art of Noise by Alec Ross was a book i expected to read and enjoy. Instead i found it lacking a real sense of pleasure in the Music of the twentieth century, reciting details of 20th Century composer's lives and the reactions of the critics to their work didnt really inform me enough to make me want to hear the works.. But i can play recordings of Brahms and Mahler, and they are different to hearing the music fresh in the concert hall. The fact that musicians use recorded medium hasnt necessarily improved the content, though one can now hear it in any location, not just a concert hall or a music room.
So, "whats there to like" in the late 19th century? - for me there are unexplored poets and novels and coherent pieces of music that are 20 minutes long, with no simplified guide to decode them. I could embrace it with more passion, but now i'm dabbling to find out more of an arcane world which has left its remains just below ground.
and we're now at the twentyfirst century! From Twitter I get news of new products, inventions, created and broadcast to me. But im sceptical that nanotech is already being treated as a commercial and investment subject: enabling better beauty products and building up expectations in another financial bubble. The marketing of new toys and gadgets is apparently to access electronic media that are dominated by celebrity cults. And nothing now lasts or seems designed for permanent ownership. The art has no frame. The music exists only mp3, the words are generated in hours and read, then discarded as papertrash. Twitter in fact seems in total contrast to the way that knowledge was shared in the 19th Century. A mass of people get access to snippets of information which has no permanence and gets overcovered by a snowstorm of vanity networking and commercial exploitation. The 19th Century use of knowledge focussed on disciplined individuals, with a genuine interest occasionally collaborating with a few other individuals. Their approach was personalised and not necessarily efficient, but it required a greater focus and attention, and im convinced that those whos discoveries and inventions we now rely on were supremely able scientists.
Well this is a blog. i could write anything here. I have no dependence on it and it can be dissolved into electrons in a keystroke. It passes time while on the train but my time could instead be spent reading Coventry Patmore or Arthur Hugh Clough. One final thought is that i think we gain by some form of recycling of other knowledge. This is at the heart of Consilence the main theme in www.siev.co.uk.
.
I did my degree in History and History of Art, after originally studying Chemistry. At the time I was concerned that the future was heading towards the industrialisation of the world and increasing commericalisation. I switched to Art History to learn about Surrealism, Leonardo, Renoir and Photography and for a few years my scientific interest was submerged. Gradually i reawakened my interest and now revel in the connectedness of science, from genetics to quantum physics. I still dread the dominance of science by business : the promethean implications of modern possibility when linked to human weakness.
At the end of the 19th century there seems to have been a general respect for Science, as well as a mystery and risk about it. The early science fiction of Jules Verne was linked to the adventure fiction of Conan-Doyle and Rider Haggard. Writing about things that seemed "incredible". Scientists were independent and focussed on finding out "why". If they received an income it was as a lecturer, but there was a competitiveness about them and a desire for glory and recognition. Its also hard now to imagine the mystery of finding out the interconnectedness of the infinitely small. Atomic Particles, Rays, Chemical Elements were all being investigated with a care and attention to detail.
Theres such a breadth to what is encompassed in 19th Century Science and the eminent figures themselves bridge disciplines They explored technique in the same way that a traveller would a landscape. Painters such as Cezanne would look for new ways to make pigment (philip ball's book on Colour) . Darwin would grow seeds in his potting shed. Travel had broadened the mind, Darwin, Dickens, Stevenson, Gauguin,
Subjects weren't dumbed down. daily life was influenced by the commercial product - wrights coal tar soap, mass produced goods available, train travel. The range of possibility continued for year.
Then the interest in what it was possible to discover, either by endless repetitive experiment - Darwin, or using new techniques in chemistry and academic discipline in measurement in physics - Kelvin. engineered Microscopes, Vacuums in glass tubes. Electricity. i suppose im less interested in the mathematical reasoning of Einstein and the philosophic logic of Russell. The real mountain the late victorians climbed was to take on the world around them and measure it in the lab.
So back to what fascinates and inspires me. Could Marconi have imagined the world connected by mobile phones carried everywhere by 2 billion people?. The first recording of sound by Alexander Bell has now transformed into music on demand. The electronic word has replaced the hand-written text and notebooks the 19th Century genius's used. But theres also a greater disconnect. We cant conceive the historic innnovations that have gone in to transforming a few rare minerals and metals into minute electronic components, being manufactured in world wide supply chains controlled by computer networks themselves built of millions of electronic machines. When you take this back to a 19th century starting point, you wonder how such evolution and revolution comes about.
But has art improved in the same way? I remember the Art History lectures on Mannerism as an artistic evolution of the Renaissance Painting. The theory that as the technique gets popularised, so the subject matter and content become more bizarre and off-key. I wonder: Has the direction of travel be positive for Music, Painting and Literature in the last 100 years? Im not convinced. The Art of Noise by Alec Ross was a book i expected to read and enjoy. Instead i found it lacking a real sense of pleasure in the Music of the twentieth century, reciting details of 20th Century composer's lives and the reactions of the critics to their work didnt really inform me enough to make me want to hear the works.. But i can play recordings of Brahms and Mahler, and they are different to hearing the music fresh in the concert hall. The fact that musicians use recorded medium hasnt necessarily improved the content, though one can now hear it in any location, not just a concert hall or a music room.
So, "whats there to like" in the late 19th century? - for me there are unexplored poets and novels and coherent pieces of music that are 20 minutes long, with no simplified guide to decode them. I could embrace it with more passion, but now i'm dabbling to find out more of an arcane world which has left its remains just below ground.
and we're now at the twentyfirst century! From Twitter I get news of new products, inventions, created and broadcast to me. But im sceptical that nanotech is already being treated as a commercial and investment subject: enabling better beauty products and building up expectations in another financial bubble. The marketing of new toys and gadgets is apparently to access electronic media that are dominated by celebrity cults. And nothing now lasts or seems designed for permanent ownership. The art has no frame. The music exists only mp3, the words are generated in hours and read, then discarded as papertrash. Twitter in fact seems in total contrast to the way that knowledge was shared in the 19th Century. A mass of people get access to snippets of information which has no permanence and gets overcovered by a snowstorm of vanity networking and commercial exploitation. The 19th Century use of knowledge focussed on disciplined individuals, with a genuine interest occasionally collaborating with a few other individuals. Their approach was personalised and not necessarily efficient, but it required a greater focus and attention, and im convinced that those whos discoveries and inventions we now rely on were supremely able scientists.
Well this is a blog. i could write anything here. I have no dependence on it and it can be dissolved into electrons in a keystroke. It passes time while on the train but my time could instead be spent reading Coventry Patmore or Arthur Hugh Clough. One final thought is that i think we gain by some form of recycling of other knowledge. This is at the heart of Consilence the main theme in www.siev.co.uk.
.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Reading on tuesday morning
A day at home so i start by finishing "Gun - with occasional music" excellent turns of phrase and wit throughout. at the end the whodunnit plot does seem completely superfluous and you want a few more wisecracking pages to appear.
then time for a change - Victorian verse by Christopher Ricks an anthology. Started today with a very short poem by Matthew Arnold on Old Age - Destiny - then another called Growing Old - both written when he was less than 50. I read the rest of MA's poems in the anthology. Sense of melancholic distance in them all. I felt an empathy to him, particularly in his search for feeling and desire to link the present and the past. They are not "inspirational" poems, but left me seeking more about him.
So more to come of the poems - see if i can find a link to a web site with them on
the rest of the day stretches ahead. A visit to opticians, then a trip to Goodwood Races,
then time for a change - Victorian verse by Christopher Ricks an anthology. Started today with a very short poem by Matthew Arnold on Old Age - Destiny - then another called Growing Old - both written when he was less than 50. I read the rest of MA's poems in the anthology. Sense of melancholic distance in them all. I felt an empathy to him, particularly in his search for feeling and desire to link the present and the past. They are not "inspirational" poems, but left me seeking more about him.
So more to come of the poems - see if i can find a link to a web site with them on
the rest of the day stretches ahead. A visit to opticians, then a trip to Goodwood Races,
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Book review Q is for Quantum
Q is for Quantum by John Gribbin
encyclopedia format which helps for cross referencing (who was the Bose in Bose-Einstein condensate?) but impossible to read cover to cover. Quantum physics is chock full of new terms so helpful to have dictionary definitions, but the mixing of reference to things and the biographical entries doesnt work for me. So on a plus side i now know there is a family relationship between George Thomson and JJ, but no relation to Lord Kelvin (William Thomson). Id actually never heard of Count Rumford (Sir Benjamin Thompson )and intrigued by him
So Lots of journalised snippets in this, but did this book need to be written. the "timeline" section at the back, where peoples birthdates and events are shown side by side appears extraneous. trying to show relationship between people and discoveries by year. the physicists Birth-dates stop after 1950 (havent there been any prodigy quantum scientists recently?) and page after page of discovery since the sixties.
Its a chunk block of reading, reasonable for reference though of course outdated within months of publication. Dont think it will get revised. id like to know if if there is an online source on Quantum Physics which shows more Consilience.
encyclopedia format which helps for cross referencing (who was the Bose in Bose-Einstein condensate?) but impossible to read cover to cover. Quantum physics is chock full of new terms so helpful to have dictionary definitions, but the mixing of reference to things and the biographical entries doesnt work for me. So on a plus side i now know there is a family relationship between George Thomson and JJ, but no relation to Lord Kelvin (William Thomson). Id actually never heard of Count Rumford (Sir Benjamin Thompson )and intrigued by him
So Lots of journalised snippets in this, but did this book need to be written. the "timeline" section at the back, where peoples birthdates and events are shown side by side appears extraneous. trying to show relationship between people and discoveries by year. the physicists Birth-dates stop after 1950 (havent there been any prodigy quantum scientists recently?) and page after page of discovery since the sixties.
Its a chunk block of reading, reasonable for reference though of course outdated within months of publication. Dont think it will get revised. id like to know if if there is an online source on Quantum Physics which shows more Consilience.
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