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Working Definitions:
Various thoughts on Science, Art, Culture, Memes and More
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| "All
artists are trying to literally create life." William Burroughs[6]
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is of great social import for our future to analyze and criticize works
of art (a cow or a gene-manipulated bacterium) by the views and criteria
of art, and not only by economic, political, and scientific criteria."
Peter Gerwin Hoffman, quoted in [5] |
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| “The
process is hugely meticulous,” says Zaretksy, “There is incredible
rigor.” By contrast, “Artists are taught to be walking singularities,
scientists are focused on repeatability.” [1] |
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| Note: see
the full text for detailed definitions and sources in the glossary |
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| Art
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Science |
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Culture |
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Meme |
| Full
definition |
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Full
definition |
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Full
definition |
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Full
definition |
- Human
effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of
nature.
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- Knowledge;
knowledge of principles and causes; ascertained truth of facts.
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- The
totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs,
institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
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- A
unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea,
that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind
to another.
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- The
production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
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- Accumulated
and established knowledge, which has been systematized and formulated
with reference to the discovery of general truths or the operation
of general laws; knowledge classified and made available in work,
life, or the search for truth; comprehensive, profound, or philosophical
knowledge.
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- These
patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of
a particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian
culture; Japanese culture; the culture of poverty.
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- Richard
Dawkins's term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially
with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating
them much as viruses do.
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- Human
works of beauty considered as a group
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- Knowledge
when it relates to the physical world and its phenomena, the nature,
constitution, and forces of matter, the qualities and functions
of living tissues, etc.; -- called also natural science, and physical
science.
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- These
patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular
category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression: religious
culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture.
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- Memes
can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve
in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive
better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings;
and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements
of each parent idea.
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- High
quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty;
aesthetic value.
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- Art,
skill, or expertness, regarded as the result of knowledge of laws
and principles.
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- The
predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning
of a group or organization.
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- he
term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex"
denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organized
belief system
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- A
nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
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- Any
branch or department of systematized knowledge considered as a
distinct field of investigation or object of study; as, the science
of astronomy, of chemistry, or of mind.
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- Intellectual
and artistic activity and the works produced by it.
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- Use
of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and
presumably other tool- and language-using intelligent beings)
cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more
important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary
traits.
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- A
system of principles and methods employed in the performance of
a set of activities
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- A
high degree of taste and refinement formed by aesthetic and intellectual
training.
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| Usage:
Science, Literature, Art. Science is literally knowledge, but more usually
denotes a systematic and orderly arrangement of knowledge. In a more distinctive
sense, science embraces those branches of knowledge of which the subject-matter
is either ultimate principles, or facts as explained by principles or laws
thus arranged in natural order. The term literature sometimes denotes all
compositions not embraced under science, but usually confined to the belles-lettres.
[See Literature.] Art is that which depends on practice and skill in performance.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA,
Inc. |
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Usage
Note: The application of the term culture to the collective attitudes
and behavior of corporations arose in business jargon during the late
1980s and early 1990s. Unlike many locutions that emerge in business jargon,
it spread to popular use in newspapers and magazines. Few Usage Panelists
object to it. Over 80 percent of Panelists accept the sentence The new
management style is a reversal of GE's traditional corporate culture,
in which virtually everything the company does is measured in some form
and filed away somewhere. · Ever since C.P. Snow wrote of the
gap between “the two cultures” (the humanities and science)
in the 1950s, the notion that culture can refer to smaller segments of
society has seemed implicit. Its usage in the corporate world may
also have been facilitated by increased awareness of the importance of
genuine cultural differences in a global economy, as between Americans
and the Japanese, that have a broad effect on business practices.
Source: The
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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| What
is art and how do we evaluate it? |
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What
is science and how do we evaluate it? |
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- human
activities
- a
way of testing reality
- problem
solving
- a
way of representing reality or concepts
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- human
activities
- problem
solving
- a
way of testing reality
- a
way of gaining knowledge of the universe
- potential
for utility
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| Attributes
of a work of art we evaluate: |
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Attributes
of a work of science we evaluate: |
- concept
- coherence
- execution
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- concept(s)
- can
someone else replicate the results - set up the same conditions
and run the experiment and get the same outcomes
- operation
of the model
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``In science,
scimus ut sciamus; in art, scimus ut producamus. And, therefore, science
and art may be said to be investigations of truth; but one, science, inquires
for the sake of knowledge; the other, art, for the sake of production; and
hence science is more concerned with the higher truths, art with the lower;
and science never is engaged, as art is, in productive application. And
the most perfect state of science, therefore, will be the most high and
accurate inquiry;the perfection of art will be the most apt and efficient
system of rules; art always throwing itself into the form of rules.'' --Karslake.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA,
Inc.
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| "Knowledge
and our approaches to it are the subjects of my paintings."
Cristina Vergano [2] |
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Artist
statement:
My
paintings hark back to a time before the Industrial Age; when geography
still held unknowns, archeology was not a science, and science itself
was struggling to find order in an overbearing nature which held
more ominous questions than answers.
I portray
those offspring of evolution, which could have been but never came
to be, or have developed, but died never being witnessed by humans.
Knowledge
and our approaches to it are the subjects of my paintings. The cartouche
held by the hybrid being in the central panel of the triptych bears
a quote from Virgil's Georgics: "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere
causas," (happy is he who knows the causes of things). The
similar scroll in the right panel reads "Certum est qui impossible
est," (it is certain because it is impossible -Tertullian).
The bird in the left panel holds a cartouche which reads "Damnant
quod non intellegunt," (they condemn what they do not understand
-Anon). The Latin quotations reflect the three basic attitudes toward
knowledge: belief by faith, knowledge based on rationality, and
blind rejection of what does not fit our parameters. Paradoxically,
I embrace all of these.
Source:
[2]
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| In
the Nature of Things (Simia Pelagi) (detail), 2001 |
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oil
on panel, 28x56" (triptych, open)
Private Collection, USA |
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| "How
can the discoveries of scientific research and the powerful metaphors of
art combine to impact society at large?" Learn more about the ASCI
2001 conference here: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cepp/courses/science.html
and here http://www.asci.org/home.html
Work includes: " projects involving artists and scientists, ranging
from photographs rendered in hybrid grass, to a musical score based on brain
activity, to sculpture grown from living tissue."[3] |
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Genomic
Art
- art that
reflects on the process, meaning, and ramifications of genetic research
- artistic
practices that use genetics as metaphor and/or creative substrate
- Difference
between genetic art and other representational art is that it is visualizing
mental constructs, as DNA is invisible to our eyes, instead of portraying
objects that we can see.
- See: Gessert,
George, A Brief History Of Art Involving DNA, 1996.
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| "It
is important to analyze and criticize art from the perspective of genetics,
since all art has genetic implications and effects. All culture, for that
matter, has genetic effects." - George Gessert, Notes on Genetic Art,
1993 [6]. |
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| Memetics
and Culture: |
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"Given
that we now know more about the way the human brain processes information,
should we use this knowledge to engineer culture more adapted to our minds
so that we are more susceptible to it? But then, who decides what culture
is good for us? And what about the inevitable unforeseen consequences
of memetic modification? How should we react to the very real possibility
of designing information that hi-jacks the processing structure of our
brains, like a computer virus, to replicate itself for its own ends? Before
we know it, we may find ourselves humming to tunes we do not like, becoming
victims to fashions and fads, or becoming obsessed with buying quite useless
products. Or is it already too late?" Read more at http://www.viralculture.com/gmmm.htm
[6]
For more
on Contagion Psychology: http://www.viralculture.com/
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