Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Art and Beauty


I think this painting by the artist Paul Klee is a good example of art that is interesting and aesthetically pleasing.  I like the shapes color scale he uses, and the fact that there’s more to this painting than initially meets the eye.  This painting was originally entitled “Rose Garden (The Golden Fish)”, and if you focus on the rose at the rose in the center, you can see that Klee utilized dimension in the painting – the rose in the middle of the painting becomes the eye of a fish.  Each time you look at it from a different perspective, you see something different.  I believe that this is a good example of art because Klee’s assumed goal was to create a piece of visually appealing art with multiple dimensions.  He had a message to send across as well.  Klee most likely had a message to send across as well.  He was known to challenge the common ideas of abstract art with his ideas and painting techniques.




Something that I consider to be beautiful, but not art, is a sunrise.  The colors produced in the sky and on the water from a sunrise are different almost every time, but are always pretty.  This example is not a piece of art because it occurs naturally.  Because it was not human made, it was never intended to be art and it was never intended to communicate a message or evoke an emotional response.




I was in Washington D.C. about a year ago, and I saw some weird collections of videos in the modern art museum.  Although I couldn’t find examples of these online, I found a sample of videos from the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary art in Berlin.  It is considered art – there was a clear intention to convey a certain message to the audience.  However, I’m not sure what the messages behind these videos are.  Although strange and thought provoking, I wouldn’t consider them beautiful.

 
Berlin - Modern Art from Robert White on Vimeo.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Paradigm Shift: The Trial of Galileo

I would try to convince the philosopher and the mathematician that although it is difficult to abandon the principles and ideas that you believed your entire life, you must be open to new evidence.  I would try to convince them that the second-hand knowledge that was communicated to them about Earth’s position in the universe might not be reliable.  For instance, the mathematician quotes the prominent philosopher Aristotle.  They quote him because he is a greatly renowned scholar who shaped a large part of the cultural paradigm of that time, but they don’t produce any real proof.  On the other hand, Galileo can produce solid evidence that his conclusions are true.  Although it may be difficult to try to convince them that we are not the center of the universe because of the emotional commitment involved in that way of thinking, I would try to show them that if your different senses match up and point you towards a certain conclusion, it can very well be an accurate depiction of reality – even if it goes against what you previously thought.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Incognito Review

Incognito: The Secret Life of the Brain by David Eagleman discusses more than just how our conscious thoughts work; it delves into our subconscious mind and its surprising processes.  In this book, Eagleman seems to at least partially back the reductionist theory – a philosophical position which states that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.  The evidence that Eagleman brings up seems to advocate the idea that a person or a soul is not truly in control of his or her actions; instead, the chemical reactions and interactions within the neurocircuitry in our brains dictates who we are.  However, in the conclusion of the book, Eagleman ascertains that there is still much to be learned about the human brain and that examining and completely understanding our brains with our own brains is impossible, and that there are things about ourselves we may never know.
I believe that some of the evidence that Eagleman brought forward in this book is pretty interesting.  In one chapter, he mentions the condition spatial synesthesia.  People with spatial synesthesia see things in a different dimension than others.  For example, they can “see” Thursday or point to the number 99.  While I would imagine this to be an unrealistic nuisance to live with, people with this condition can’t imagine living without it.  Eaglman then draws the analogy of a color blind person asking someone with typical sight if it bothers them being able to see colors all of the time.  What he poses about reality being subjective opened my mind to the world around me.  While I know that it is best to be reasonable and live my life based on what I perceive, this evidence makes me wonder if there truly is an objective reality.
While Eagleman brings up some interesting evidence, I do not always agree with the way he interprets it.  For example, in one chapter, he brings up certain cases, such as the University of Texas shooting, where people who have committed a crime actually did so because of neurological damage such as a brain tumor.  Eagleman then goes on to say that it can be possible that people who commit crimes may do so based on the way their brain is wired, and we have no way of knowing it because the brain defect is so small that we cannot detect it.  Therefore, he proposes that eventually we should rehabilitate criminals based on the state of their brain and their mental health instead of sentencing them to prison.  While I think this is an interesting idea that can benefit a lot of people, I do not think this is a feasible possibility in the near future.  It would be an expensive feat that would require a lot of time and energy, and we would also have to change the entire criminal justice system.  I do agree that this idea is interesting and could be beneficial, but it would take a lot of debate and changes to put it into motion – something I don’t think will happen any time soon.
In all, I think that Incognito was interesting and helped put me in a TOK mindset.  It would get slow at times, but there was a lot of interesting information on how our minds work.  However, I know that many people do not like the idea that we are just a sum of chemical reactions in our brain.  While there is decent evidence for this argument, most people, including myself, don’t want to believe it.  Either way, Eagleman does an effective job at making you think.  While the book was thought provoking, I only think that I would recommend it to a friend if he was really interested in this topic.



Eagleman and Stephen Colbert discuss Incognito, Pink Floyd, and Inception.