The Artful Universe: The Cosmic Source of Human Creativity

by John D. Barrow

Book Overview

In this eclectic and entertaining study of the interrelationship between the arts and the sciences, Barrow explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316082422
• ISBN13: 9780316082426
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

No mind was ever a tabula rasa

John Barrow illuminates in this book the relationship between the sciences and the arts with a new perspective on our emergence in the Universe by means of natural selection. As the philosopher Victor Zuckerkandl says (quoted in this book): 'Art does not aim at beauty. It uses beauty (or ugliness) to arrive ultimately at knowledge, at truth.' (as science) Many natural adaptations have given rise to curious by-products, some of which have played a role in determining our aesthetic sense. Although sometimes very tentative, this rich book sheds an insightful light on more or less hidden links, like - the connection between the heavenly bodies and the pattern of life on earth (28 days) - the importance of symmetry: living beings are symmetrical, which is rare for inanimate objects. Also, our evaluation of physical beauty focuses on symmetry. - size as a key to survival, with the adage 'small is best'. 'The Almighty had an inordinate fondness of beetles.' - the origin of painting: a natural outgrowth of the fallibility of human memory and the need to communicate. Also, the reason why we like savannah landscapes and not computer paintings because they seem unnatural. - the Chomsky (innate patterns) / Piaget (blank slate) controversy on the origin of language - the origin of literature: the craving for social cohesion and well-being met by oral history and stories in which the hearers appear in a leading role. More, 'The pen is mightier than the sword.' - the origin of dance: a need for frenzied activity or heightened sensibilities in preparation for war, in celebration of fertility or birth or in mourning death. The rhythmic gyrations of primitive dance bind people together. - the origin of music (the purest form of art): animal mating calls. John Barrow explains clearly the relationship between music and mathematics as well as theories on mathematics (Platonism, intuitionism, inventionism, formalism) and music (absolutism and referentialism). This book is an excellent exploration of a vast and very interesting human domain. Not to be missed.

Science and Art Do Meet

"Kristor" review "The Cosmic Anthropological Principle" is thoroughly apt, and I've noticed that the book is being supplanted by an "expanded" version, although the description of the expanded version seems identical to this book. The thesis of this book is quite simple: Science has found that we humans are wired so that certain things in the universe are necessarily that way and could not be otherwise. Because of this "hard wiring" as one commentator observes, the strict methodology of science has just recently began to branch out of its "models" of uniformity and embraced diversity. Meanwhile, the diversity of human creativity, especially as it applies to the arts, has avoided at all costs any semblance of having a "model" by which to judge the universal appeals of so much diversity. It's time that the creative arts started taking a look for "models" into serious view as it evaluates themselves. I think this is a reasonable and defensible thesis against solipsism. The argument is not an either/or dysjunction, but an and/both conjunction. Science has discovered a number of theories which serve to explain the universe as we know it. It strives to find the common ground on which to evaluate the world as we have come to know it. Conversely, the creative arts and the humanities have avoided, to the extreme, any effort for artists to "conform" to similar models found in nature and described by science. Barrow thinks it is time to reverse this odd peculiarity. After all, when we evaluate painting or music, for example, we see that certain patterns emerge which give each endeavor a backbone for acceptance or rejection. The archetonics of harmonic cords and pictoral perspectivism require that certain creative arts fulfill these a priori demands, otherwise we regard such works as "distorted" or even worse "contorted." This result is not arbitrary, but developed over years of knowing that representational art must be "three dimensional," not two, and that in music a chord is composed of certain harmonic notes that please the natural disposition of the ear both aesthetically and physiologically. Barrow illustrates these patterns of proportionality, perspectivism, chordal harmonies, etc., in light that they shed on the acceptability or rejection of certain "given" patterns innate in life. His thesis that the creative arts ought at least entertain the association of these innate given patterns in their evaluation as "works of art," just as science has decreed that the universe itself operates on the principles of certain immutable laws. I found his argument persausive, as one who is endeared more towards the artistic endeavors more than to the scientific ones. Thus, not all that passes itself off a "art" ought to be evaluated on the basis of its diversity, but also on the basis of its conformity to certain aesthetic criteria that are found in nature itself. Thus, many of those artistic endeavors that are meant to shock the observer by their discordance a

The Cosmic Anthropological Principle

Barrow, of course, is with Frank Tipler the author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, which argues that the fundamental constants and initial conditions of the cosmos had to be more or less exactly as they are or life - thus our conscious, self-aware human life - could not have happened. In The Artful Universe, Barrow explores in great and fascinating detail just exactly how the fine structure of the cosmos bears fruit in the structure of the human body, and in particular the structure of our ideas, preferences, values, aesthetic reactions, ways of thinking; our minds. The primary thrust of this wide-ranging survey is that animal minds and bodies subjected to natural selection are in big trouble if they embody propositions about the world, and therefore about the appropriate way to behave, that are in any important way essentially wrong. He argues that just as the structure of the eye constitutes evidence one way or the other for the correspondence to reality of our ideas about light, so the structure of, e.g., our mathematical faculties constitutes evidence for the mathematical structure of reality.Barrow is terrifyingly erudite, and a clear, graceful writer. He manages to convey boatloads of highly technical concepts from numerous fields in crystalline arguments accessible to anyone with a basic scientific education. You will learn a ton from this book. You'll work for it - Barrow never condescends - but you will be well rewarded.

The evolutionary anthropology of beauty.

This work relates the experiential beauty of the world to our sense of place within it. Barrow supports his ideas with insight and depth. Although some of the science is presented in confounding detail, it is nonetheless enlightening. As someone who teaches ecology, I would highly endorse it.

Why are we the way we are? This book explains it all....

A book which explains how natural laws of the universe shape our size, our myths and legends, our attraction to certain patterns etc. Everything is explained in scientific terms, but illustrated very nicely by examples, so makes a great read.... even for those whose mother language isn' t English!