Is it math or is it art?

[StrangeCaptain]

An e-mail from one of my professors:

"This month's London Mathematical Society newsletter covers a recent exhbition
by Justin Mullins, entitled Mathematical Photography: an exhibition of the
world's most beautiful equations. Some of this work is available online at:
http://www.justinmullins.com"

Take a look. It is interesting.

 

[aurora]

That is very interesting but since I can't understand what the equations represent, if maybe Ark can comment on them I would love to read his remarks.
As a student I loved algebra and solving the equations. Then we had a chemistry teacher (MR. Tracy) and he had told us that theoretical physics was the queen of all sciences (actually he was a physics teacher I guess) We were 16 then. He would try to explain Einstein's famous equation e= mc2 and I loved to hear what he said but if someone said I don't understand he would just erase it and say forget it. Well I wanted to be a chemical engineer because I loved chemistry and because I had read the life of Marie Curie. But I ended up in Business admin. which I did not like so much but finished it anyway (We had entrance exams for the university and since we were not given enough science and math classes at school I could get enough points for chemistry eng.)

 

[Michael]

There's a running joke in the art world that goes something like this:
If an artist scribbles something on a blackboard that people don’t understand – they say, “Well, I don’t understand it therefore the artist is stupid.”
But if a scientist scribbles some equations on the blackboard the same people will say, “Well, I don’t understand it therefore I must be stupid.”

Perhaps Justin Mullins is responding (perhaps sarcastically) to such perceptions about the viewing public. :)

 

[ark]

Artist do very strange things. I will posts one example the coming Monday in "Ark's quirks" on SOTT page. Therefore taking some equations and presenting them as "art" is just another way of "being original". The content of some of the mathematical formulas may represent a real beauty - that I am pretty sure. Think of fractal images, for instance. Think of "holden proportion". But the form of these
formulas is to much an extent the result of some rather arbitrary conventions, therefore pretending that the form is "beautiful" has the taste of brainwashing and disinforming the poor audience.

Commenting on Michael's comment:

But if a scientist scribbles some equations on the blackboard the same people will say, “Well, I don’t understand it therefore I must be stupid.”

I am afraid that, unfortunately, all too often it goes even this way: if a scientist scribbles some equations on the blackboard the other scientists will say, “Well, I don’t understand it therefore it must be true and very deep!” The problem is that sometimes, rarely, it is true and deep (or, at least, "almost true" and "inspiring"). But most of the time, in such cases, the unfortunate writer does not understand what he is writing himself, and is simply making an error disguised as a discovery.

ark

 

[Michael]

I am afraid that, unfortunately, all too often it goes even this way: if a scientist scribbles some equations on the blackboard the other scientists will say, “Well, I don’t understand it therefore it must be true and very deep!” The problem is that sometimes, rarely, it is true and deep (or, at least, "almost true" and "inspiring"). But most of the time, in such cases, the unfortunate writer does not understand what he is writing himself, and is simply making an error disguised as a discovery.

ark

That’s probably truer in theoretical physics than in mainstream science.
The way you’ve written it here seems to me a bit of an over generalization.

Both my parents were scientist and I’ve worked in a few labs myself. Most scientist that I’ve known are working in more practical day to day matters, and have to be very careful about documenting everything so that it can be replicated by other scientist.

For example:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5767/1533
Columbia Lab Retracts Key Catalysis Papers
Robert F. Service
"The Journal of the American Chemical Society last week printed corrections for three papers on so-called C-H activation catalysts from the lab of Columbia University chemist Dalibor Sames after the group failed to reproduce the results."

 

[anart]

I am afraid that, unfortunately, all too often it goes even this way: if a scientist scribbles some equations on the blackboard the other scientists will say, “Well, I don’t understand it therefore it must be true and very deep!” The problem is that sometimes, rarely, it is true and deep (or, at least, "almost true" and "inspiring"). But most of the time, in such cases, the unfortunate writer does not understand what he is writing himself, and is simply making an error disguised as a discovery.

ark

That’s probably truer in theoretical physics than in mainstream science.
The way you’ve written it here seems to me a bit of an over generalization.

Both my parents were scientist and I’ve worked in a few labs myself. Most scientist that I’ve known are working in more practical day to day matters, and have to be very careful about documenting everything so that it can be replicated by other scientist.

For example:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5767/1533
Columbia Lab Retracts Key Catalysis Papers
Robert F. Service
"The Journal of the American Chemical Society last week printed corrections for three papers on so-called C-H activation catalysts from the lab of Columbia University chemist Dalibor Sames after the group failed to reproduce the results."

Interesting and timely, as a doctor of microbiology just visited my home over the weekend and we were discussing the state of science today (and of the last 50 years, since so little has changed). They actually said almost exactly what Ark said, though in different terms - and also mentioned that when experimentation results in anomalous data, it is usually pushed aside as something 'that shouldn't happen', or at most, relegated to the realm of 'epi-genetics'. The longer we ignore the 'epigenetic' factors, the longer we circle around understanding what is really going on. Wouldn't it be nice if someday scientists could ignore funding issues and follow those anomalous results where they go - instead of working on more day to day matters, having to be very careful about documenting everything so that it can be replicated by other scientist - resulting in replication of what has already been discovered, in determining yet again that 2 plus 2 equals 4, instead of actually going somewhere we have yet to go ? Just a thought, but it seems that it would be really nice to get to that point.

 

[ark]

That’s probably truer in theoretical physics than in mainstream science.
The way you’ve written it here seems to me a bit of an over generalization.

I am afraid what you call "mainstream science" is even more vulnerable to manipulations by external funding and political pressures than theoretical physics. Look at that:

Research funded by drug companies is more likely to produce results that favour the sponsor's product, reveals a new study.

Researchers analysed 30 previous reports examining pharmaceutical industry-backed research and found the conclusions of such research were four times more likely to be positive than research backed by other sponsors.

"What we found was that in almost all cases there was a bias - a rather heavy bias - in favour [of a drug] when the study was industry funded," study leader Joel Lexchin told New Scientist.

But not only the funding is the problem. The politics and military involvement add to it. While in the US (and in Russia) one should not take seriously any of the published results that may have impact on corporate and government interests, in other countries, in France for instance, it is scientsists that destroy each other because of jealousy and because of incompetence of those in charge of the research. David Ruelle (theoretical physicist) has made this comment about publishing of original results in mainstream journals:

Reasonable-looking papers are accepted, obviously bad papers are rejected, and good papers that are a bit original and out of the norm tend to be rejected too. (David Ruelle, in "Chance and Chaos", Princeton Science Library, 1991

Then he added:

Much worse is the faking of data. Fraud of this kind has unfortunately been shown to occur on a large scale in biomedical research in the United States.[...] One reason for such fraud is that many people write papers for carreer reasons and have little interest in scientific truth. And there is the ever-present need to get results if funding is to be obtained.

I need to add that David Ruelle is my personal hero. Here is his photo that I took at one of the conferences some ten years ago.

As for the equations themselves..... Well the first one is
exp(i pi)+1 = 0.
Which means: take number +1, put it right to zero, on the axis, then rotate by pi radians (that is 180 degrees) around zero - you get -1. Then you have
-1+1=0.
That is all about the first equation. Other equations in Mullins' gallery are either trivial or stupid. There is one called "Aleph one", which is not an equation. It is a symbol. When we say that a set has "cardinality aleph one" - that means that the elements of the set can be numbered by all finite sequences of integers. This particular "cardinality" became kind of famous because of the so called "continuum hypothesis", but going into that would take us too far. Anyway, aleph is a Hebrew character, and omega is a Greek character. Sure they are both "pretty"! Many letters can be made pretty ....

ark

 

[Michael]

Scientist in general: If it doesn’t fit their theory/thesis they write it off as an artifact – in too big of a hurry to get published to mess with anomalies. And sometimes they’re understaffed and there’s too much work to be done.
Yes, I’ve seen that happen.
My mother was very prolific for the short time that she was a research scientist at UTD. She would search for whatever grants were available and simply go after them with whatever research they required. She had a reputation as a hard worker and was well on her way to a professorship before being diagnosed with cancer.
It would have been interesting to see what she might have done if she’d had the funding that she needed to do whatever she wanted.

And as far as the drug companies are concerned, what about those pesticide companies and their permethrin?

And as far as the artwork – I think that we all would've had more respect for the artist if he had come up with his own equations rather than merely illustrating someone else’s. Even, if his calculations were wrong.