TWO CULTURES
DESMA 9:
Art, Science and Technology
"the further art advances the closer it
approaches science, the further science
advances the closer it approaches art."
Buckminster Fuller, 1938
TOPICS:
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CP Snow’s lecture
Stereotypes
Evolution of Universities
Specialization
Economies of Culture
Paradigms
Methodologies
Frank Malina: Leonardo journal
Third Culture
C.P. Snow said that these two statements
should be equivalent:
"I know what the
Second Law of Thermodynamics is,"
and "I have read a play
of Shakespeare's."
You should be acquainted with both.
The compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary recognised that this was
a fairly recent development, with no example given before the 1860's:
"We shall . . . use the word "science" in the sense which the Englishmen
so commonly give it; as expressing physical and experimental science,
to the exclusion of theological and metaphysical." (Snow, 1964 pg. xi)
William Whewell, a philosopher and historian of science who used
'science' in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences of 1840,
is credited with establishing this term.
The first time it was recorded as an idea, however, was at the
Association for the Advanced Science in the early 1830's when it was
proposed as an analogy to the term 'artist.'
STEREOTYPE
ste·reo·typ·i·cal /"ster-E-&-'tip-i-k&l/ also ste·reo·typ·ic /-ik/ adjective
Function: noun
: something conforming to a fixed or general pattern; especially :
an often oversimplified or biased mental picture held to characterize the
typical individual of a group —
A generalization, usually exaggerated or oversimplified
and often offensive, that is used to describe or distinguish a group.
Question:
What is the one thing
that these media stereotypes
have in common?
• EVOLUTION OF TEACHING
INSTITUTIONS
Harvard University
Chapel at Boston University
Church at Yale University
Lecture at Princeton University
Harvard Library
Art building at Yale University
Broad Art Center, UCLA
Designed by Richard Meier
California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI), UCLA
Designed by Rafael Vinoly
• ECONOMY & CULTURE @ UCLA
THIRD CULTURE –
what is it?
Thomas Kuhn - Paradigms
Thomas Kuhn (1962)
Why should a change of paradigm
be called a revolution?
In the face of the vast and essential
differences between
political and scientific development,
what parallelism can justify the
metaphor that finds revolutions in both?
Paradigm Shift
http://www.knowledgejump.com/knowledge/popper.html
Karl Popper (1966)
FALSIFICATION
Karl Popper (1966)
• Objective Knowledge
• A Realist View of Logic, Physics, and
History (1966)
Twenty One Definitions of
Paradigm: Anything Goes
• Science is an essentially anarchistic enterprise:
theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and
more likely to encourage progress than its lawand-order alternatives.
• This is shown both by an examination of
historical episodes and by an abstract analysis
of the relation between idea and action. The only
principle that does not inhibit progress is:
anything goes.
METHODOLOGY
• Against Method: Feyeraband
• "All Methodologies have their limitations
and the only 'rule' that survives is 'anything
goes.' (Feyerabend, 1975, pg. 296)
Frank Malina
• Founded Leonardo journal, 1968