CULTURE CLASH:

Art That Transfigures Science (ALAN LIGHTMAN, March 15, 2003, NY Times)

In Joseph Wright of Derby's painting "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump," dated 1768, we see a stunning demonstration that air is vital for life. A white cockatoo has been taken from its cage and placed in a covered glass jar, and the air has just been pumped out by levers and pistons. Deprived of oxygen, the beautiful bird languishes at the bottom of its new cage, listlessly stretching one wing, dead within seconds if air is not let back into its container.

In the dimly lighted room, several people stare at the airless container in hypnotized fascination. But there are other reactions as well. A small girl looks up at the bird with pity and dread; another young woman is so overwhelmed that she covers her eyes. A man in a beige jacket points his finger at the bird as if explaining the principles of science involved. Another observer has taken out his watch to time the experiment. The largest figure of all, the lecturer, holds his left hand poised on the cap of the jar, able at any moment to let the precious air back in and thus restore life to the bird. Taken together, the spectators' faces reveal the full range of attitudes about science.

Wright's painting, to my mind, is a magnificent synthesis of science and art. Moreover, it emerged from a long tradition of fusing the two. Lucretius's ancient poem "De Rerum Natura" is a beautiful and sensuous exposition of the theory of atoms. Fontenelle's 17th-century book "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds" imagines a series of romantic meetings between a lady and gentleman, during which he explains the new science of Copernicus and Descartes. Wright himself kept well abreast of new developments in science. He was a member of the Lunar Society, a group of English scientists, artists and philosophers who met monthly on the Monday nearest the full moon. Later artists inspired by science included Goethe, Mary Shelley, Thomas Eakins, H. G. Wells, Karel Capek, Bertolt Brecht.

The longstanding love affair between scientists and artists continues, as exemplified by the recent films "A Beautiful Mind" and "Pi," the plays "Arcadia" by Tom Stoppard and "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn, the novels "The Gold Bug Variations" by Richard Powers and "The Mind-Body Problem" by Rebecca Goldstein, and the various exhibitions based on the double helix now in New York. Art has always wrestled with emerging ideas. Science has always been a rich source for those ideas. As Salman Rushdie said to an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in late 1993, "Many of us writers of my generation have felt that in many ways the cutting edge of the new is to be found in the sciences."

So what exactly does science have to offer the arts? What are the particular ways in which science provokes us, inspires us and examines who we are?

Mr. Lightman's own novel, Einstein's Dreams, is an especially fine example of how art can illuminate science and vice versa. But, as a general matter, modern science has had a catastrophic, though indirect, effect on art.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 15, 2003 7:41 AM