Tag Archives: Art

I got alerted to something via Twitter. It has two sides and a friend of mine had one side, as such I give you the tweet below. This of course made me look at the YouTube by Simon Pegg (the Hot Fuzz man). 

He was emotional and he has a point, but so does my friend. Optionally they do not realise that they are both a side of the same coin, one cannot exist without the other. It is a flaw in those heralding science as the one solution, it never is. It merely becomes some Theranos creation, all science and too much of it debatable. You see my friend had the answer in her tweet. Alan Turing created something from nothing. A setting that is utterly impossible. He got there through an artsy side in him. Alan Turing created the foundations of computers and AI, both required an art element to get there. You see, even when we realise it was all science, his brain had to make some leap of faith and that requires art, science alone will not let you do that. He created these two and his foundation of AI is still used today, over half a century later, with all the elements of evolved science, his artsy side overcame what did not yet exist. It is one of the reasons that (even if I was not eligible), I would have voted for Brian Blessed to become Chancellor of Cambridge in 2011, but I was not eligible. It became Lord Sainsbury of Turville, my issue here is that science was taking too big a chunk of what was almost an even Steven setting. I personally believe that Science without art is pointless, art without science is useless. It is not completely true, but as an axiom it often works. Science without art cannot grow because science for the most relies on previous data and as such NEW technologies cannot evolve. Alan Turing created (for the most) the foundations of electronics. It required investigations into the electron as well, but when you see that Alan Turing created AI half a century before we had any partial foundation of that is optionally evidence enough. 

The other side needs to be illuminated as well. Simon Pegg did this (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHEpywFCtwA) in his own emotional way and he does have a point, but so did my friend. The artsy people tend to ignore that science is their friend. Take any movie, the lights are set up to maximise the effect, it is not art, that foundation is science, science created the camera and a lot of other parts. They use that technology and they use it well. But it supports art and that is forgotten. That being said that children need maths, but they need art too and the science pushers are all about ‘forgetting’ the art and that power. You see, if you have all science and no art, you end up creating Theranos minded creators. The ones that are convicted for fraud and end up well over 11 years in prison. Art might have prevented this (and created an actual solution). In that same setting it might be the flaw that created FTX and the $33,000,000,000 losses it ensued. 

I myself tend to grasp back to an old Market research credo. “The scientist, or mathematician will show you the course of best margins of profit, or best results. The presenter, or politician makes sure that you look forward to the attached invoice” it is a bit artsy but therefor not any less true. We need to realise that art and science are to sides of the same coin. Science made it circular and the artsy people gave it a nice image. We need another and there is one part we should all agree to, if Rishi Sunak wants to imbue a sense of science, he better be ready to imbue an equal measure of art in these people, because Simon Pegg is right about that part. Science without the art will have far reaching negative impacts. We need one another to see it, one shows us, one presents it and that has been the case from before that writer William Shakespeare became a reality. It goes back all the way to the outdoor Theatre of Dionysius where in 500BC Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes performed, but we forget that science created the stage for over 15,000 people to enjoy, that part was science, not art. And it was there centuries before Christianity became reality.