Thursday, November 8
8:15 – 8:30 a.m.
Welcome
Marye Anne Fox, North Carolina State University,
2001-2002 President, Sigma Xi
Evan R. Ferguson, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
8:30-9:00 a.m.
A New Trivium and Quadrivium
George Bugliarello, Polytechnic University
There can be little question that there are conflicts today between the views that the
humanities hold of science and engineering and that science and engineering hold of the
humanities. But there are also some powerful confluences, such as that of art and
engineering in architecture. The conflicts are dangerous, as they weaken the very core of
our culture. The cause of many of them goes back to the medieval trivium and quadrivium
and its continuing impact on our education. For the sake of our future, we need a new
foundation, a new trivium and quadrivium, common to all disciplines and propaedeutic to
all specialized disciplines.
9:00 - 10:30 a.m.
Intersections in Research between the Arts and Sciences
Moderator: Susan Howard, Phi Beta Kappa
Panelists: Felice Frankel, MIT; Minor Myers, Illinois Wesleyan;
George Saliba, Columbia University; Richard Taylor, University of Oregon
Bursting with fresh and unexpected insights into the linkages between science, the arts and the humanities, this distinguished and diverse panel includes a world-renowned science photographer whose work has become the gold standard for the accurate and yet artistic interpretations of images from nature, an historian who has focused his research on the multidisciplinary and remarkably talented individuals who developed the modern approach to scientific investigation, an expert in Arab science who draws lessons about the understanding of nature from the non-western practice of scientific investigation, and a physicist who has trained a tool from mathematics on the chaotic and difficult to understand works of Jackson Pollock uncovering, as a result, a deeper understanding of the connections between the artist's interpretation of modern society and the technical work of his contemporaries in the sciences.
10:30 - 11:00 a.m.
Exhibits, Contributed Presentations & Refreshment Break
11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Science On Stage
Ray Dooley, UNC-Chapel Hill and PlayMakers Repertory Company; Ann Henley, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, North Carolina State University; Gordon Shepherd, Yale University
A recent wave of science plays, like Michael Frayn's wildly successful Copenhagen, has taken hold of the public imagination and helped to close the gap between "the two cultures." How do we explain this fruitful intersection of science and theatre? In every case it seems that science plays succeed precisely because they engage the audience in new and challenging ways. A variety of plays dealing with serious scientific issues and problems will be addressed in this session.
Science and Literature: Bridging the Two Cultures
Zack Bowen, David L. Wilson, University of Miami
A scientist and a humanities professor describe how they attempted to bridge the two cultures in a course they teach and in a book about to be published. While they disagree on some details, they share the belief that it is through cooperation and dialogue that a deeper understanding of human nature will emerge. They will present a taste of such issues as the ability of science to understand the world, the nature of mind and brain, the possibility of free will, and postmodern views of power, knowledge and language.
Science Fostering Art: Painting, Optics and the Camera Obscura
Michael Henchman, Brandeis University; Melissa Katz,
Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College; Andreas Teuber,
Brandeis University; Stephen Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
To what extent have artists, since the Renaissance, used optical devices such as the camera obscura in the design and execution of their art? David Hockney has recently drawn attention to extensive use of such devices by masters such as Ingres; Philip Steadman has shown the camera obscura to feature prominently in the oeuvre of the seventeenth century Dutch artist, Johannes
Vermeer. Art historians have played down, if not overlooked these connections, and the oversight perhaps fuels the intensity of their opposition to the insight. True or false, is it of any consequence? Why do we think that the use of a mechanical device detracts from the excellence of the art itself? This topic of great current interest will be discussed from the viewpoints of art, science and aesthetics.
Worlds in Concert: Science and Humanities Connections
Jack Gibbons, Resource Strategies; Nels
Granholm, South Dakota State
University; Robert Horan, University of Wisconsin
This session will draw on a popular interdisciplinary course at South Dakota State University that explores the broad areas of the sciences and humanities, identifies productive and unifying connections between these two fundamental areas of creative pursuit, and attempts to draw them together into a working enterprise. Among other topics, panelists will discuss productive ways to evaluate the so-called "two cultures dilemma" and review related programs, courses and experiences available at academic institutions and elsewhere.
The Literary Scientist
Opening with an invited presentation that explores ways in which the arts can foster science, this session features a variety of contributed presentations that explore the relationship between literature and science.
Invited Speaker and Moderator:
Arts Foster Science
Robert Root-Bernstein, Michigan State
University
Contributed Presentations:
Why Poets Should Read/Write Science; Why Scientists Should
Read/Write Poetry
Hal Daniel, East Carolina University
Reweaving the Rainbow: Romanticism Meets Meteorology in the Classroom
John Knox, University of Georgia
Exploring the Literal and Figurative of Metaphor: Combining Ecology, Literature and History
Stephen Johnson, Mary Stark, William Penn University
Walden and the Other Ponds: Thoreau's Lakes in the Landscape
David F. Brakke, James Madison University (tenative)
The Art and Humanity of Engineering
Henry
Petroski, Duke University
Engineering at its best always balances technical and economic considerations with those of creativity and human values. Great works of engineering are also great works of art and expressions of our humanity. Among the celebrated engineering achievements that will be discussed in this illustrated talk are the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Conservation Center: Where Art Meets Science
Terry T. Schaeffer, Conservation Center, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art
Successful conservation treatments of art objects rely on scientific knowledge. Art conservators combine their skills in studio art with their knowledge of art history and a technical understanding of the working and aging properties of the substances they use. This latter information is gained not only from practical experience, but also from chemical and physical analysis. Conservation scientists and conservators use analytical procedures to identify artists' materials and techniques, and deterioration processes that occur in works of art. They test the suitability of new materials for conservation in carefully designed experiments, usually adapting classic and modern technologies to their needs. These interdisciplinary activities will be illustrated with examples from the Conservation Center at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
3:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Bringing the Methods of the Hard Sciences to the Humanities
Wilfred Niels Arnold, University of Kansas Medical Center
Contemplations on the lives of historic figures are among the most stimulating of interdisciplinary endeavors, but such exercises will not be productive in the long run if built upon rampant speculation and absence of verifiable data. It behooves us to use the same habits of mind and process associated with the so-called hard sciences in order to shed meaningful light on topics of human, social, and cultural concern. Examples of compounded errors associated with Vincent van Gogh will be presented. The speaker will also illustrate the principle of organized skepticism, and a positive outcome, by discussing an aspect of the illness of the English monarch King George III (1738-1820) reflected on paper, stage, and film.
Break – Walk to Fletcher Opera Theater at Raleigh's BTI Center for the Performing Arts
4:00 – 4:45 p.m.
Fletcher Opera Theater
The Music of Earthquakes: Waveforms of Sound and Seismology
Andrew J. Michael, Stephanie
Ross, U.S. Geological Survey; David Schaff, Columbia University
Musicians create waves while seismologists analyze them, so these seemingly different activities are closely joined by
the waves themselves. With a mix of performance and lecture, acoustic instruments and computer generated sounds, we explore
the similarities between music and science and find new ways to learn about the earth, earthquakes, musical instruments and music. The talk will culminate by bringing music and seismology together with "Earthquake Quartet #1 for trombone, cello, voice, and earthquakes."
4:45 – 5:00 p.m.
Intermission
5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Fletcher Opera Theater
Violinmaking: Is It Art or Is It Science?
Joseph Nagyvary, Texas A & M University; Shunsuke Sato, violinist; Randall L. Love,
Duke University, pianist
A perusal of 200 years of reductionistic research of the violin reveals very little of practical significance for
the violinmaker. A thorough scientific study of the violin is difficult to conduct because of the very large number of variables and outcomes. For this reason, a holistic approach based on intuition may be more expedient if the goal is to reach the excellence
of a Stradivarius violin. Nagyvary's intuition as a biochemist led him to the assumption that the uniqueness of the Cremona violins is defined mainly by their chemical compositions and material microstructure, which are responsible for the brilliance of the
sound. He can now reproduce this unique feature of all Cremona violins by applying the proper chemicals to new violins. In his interpretation of past experiences, the creation of a great violin requires the collaboration of a scientist and an artist/craftsman.
This session is co-sponsored by the North Carolina Section of the American Chemical Society as part of National Chemistry
Week.
6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
A buffet dinner will be available on the plaza of Fletcher Opera Theater. Dinner tickets must be purchased in advance.
8:00 p.m.
Fletcher Opera Theater
SPECIAL EVENT: SEPARATE TICKET REQUIRED
Oxygen
A play by Carl Djerassi and Roald
Hoffmann
Performed by the San Diego Repertory Theatre
Introduction and Post-Performance
Discussion, Roald Hoffmann, Cornell University
What is discovery? Why is it important to be first? These questions trouble the characters in Oxygen. The action alternates
between 1777 and 2001, the Centenary of the Nobel Prize, when the Nobel Foundation decides to inaugurate the "retro-Nobel" Award for discoveries that preceded the establishment of the Prize in 1901. The Foundation thinks this will be easy. In the good old days, wasn't science done for science's sake? Wasn't discovery simple, pure and unalloyed by controversy, priority claims and hype?
The ethical issues around priority and discovery at the heart of this play are as timely today as they were in 1777. As are the
ironies of revolutions: Lavoisier, the chemical revolutionary, is a political conservative, who loses his life in the Jacobin terror. Priestley, the political radical, is a chemical conservative. And Scheele just wants to run his pharmacy. He, the first man on earth to make oxygen, got least credit for it. Will that situation be repaired 230 years after his discovery?
From Oxygen, Djerassi & Hoffmann, Wiley-VCH, 2001
This performance is co-sponsored by the North Carolina Section of the American Chemical Society
as part of National Chemistry Week.
Friday, November 9
8:15-8:45 a.m.
Creative Co-Dependents: Science, the Arts, and the Humanities
Catharine R. Stimpson, New York University
The theory that science and the humanities are two cultures that can barely mumble to each other still has a lot of
popular currency. A pity, because science and the humanities, especially when joined by the arts, are co-dependents in creating contemporary society and culture.
8:45 - 9:30 a.m.
The Stimulus and Value of Combining Art and Science for Humanist Benefit
Charles Pell, Nekton Research; Steve Wainwright, Duke University and Seesaw Studio
Gross modeling is presumably biased towards robust, evolutionarily important phenomena. Tangible models, like multi-layered
works of art, can surprise when they are encountered: material models, subject to physical laws, can reveal unanticipated properties and other effects and spawn new approaches. The art then drives the science: if you build models, the hypotheses will come. In part one of the discussion, Chuck Pell will provide examples of how models, physical abstractions of organisms, are valuable to the extent that they are "simple" and display behaviors of interest. In part two, Steve Wainwright will focus on design as art for a purpose. Artists start with a blank canvas and then derive their inspiration from the muse, while scientists start with the question "What is the design?" Examples will be shown/displayed of art in science and science in art. Some ideas concerning the connections between this topic and education (teaching and learning) will be discussed.
9:30 – 9:45 a.m.
Refreshment Break
9:45 a.m.-11:15 a.m.
CONCURRENT
SESSIONS
Can
the Internet Help Teach Complex Problems?
Michael Douma, Brandeis University & WebExhibits; Robert Panoff, Shodor Education Foundation
Can computers really help teach? Can classroom computing be more than glorified calculators and encyclopedias? What new possibilities exist for using the Web? The key is interaction. This session will demonstrate several approaches. We entice students with computer-generated models of chemistry and math concepts. Also, we explore a famous, multi-layered Renaissance painting, the Feast of the Gods. In 1512, Giovanni Bellini painted an Italian Renaissance masterpiece, but Dosso Dossi painted it over, and Titian repainted it again. What did the earlier versions look like? What motivated these unprecedented changes? To answer, we superimpose visible, infrared, and X-ray images, and zoom into the painting surface.
Parts and Wholes: A Dialogue on Science and Art as Complementary Activities
Bruce Kirchoff, University of North Carolina,
Greensboro; &Clifford Matthews, University of Illinois, Chicago
The arts, humanities and sciences are often seen as disconnected parts; parts that do not "speak" to each
other. Following German author and scientist Goethe's example, we can learn to see these parts as intrinsically connected. Doing this allows us to use insights from the arts in our work as scientists. Short presentations will explore these ideas, and will include the creation of a mandala, a visual embodiment of reason, arising from fundamental concepts of science concerned with
matter, life and mind. Following the presentations, there will be a dialogue, open to all participants, exploring the common
ground between the sciences and the arts, mind and matter.
Western Hemisphere Knowledge Partnerships: Unified Knowledge Universally Shared
Moderator: Tom Malone, North Carolina State University and Sigma Xi
Presenters: Janet Poley, ADEC & University of Nebraska; Rafael
Rangel, Instituto tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey; Samuel H. Smith, Washington State University; Dean Sutphin, Cornell University
The dramatic growth of knowledge in the physical and biological sciences, coupled with revolutionary new technologies for distributing and using that knowledge wisely, offer the opportunity to transform world society. To achieve this prosperous,
sustainable, equitable, and stable society, reconciliation will be necessary between an exponentially expanding human system on planet Earth and the finite natural system that supports it. This reconciliation requires new partnerships among the natural, social and health sciences, engineering and the humanities, as well as among academia, business and industry, and government and non-governmental organizations. Universities have a major role to play in developing the partnerships necessary to initiate this new age of knowledge. The panel will discuss this role and its relationship to recent tragic manifestations of social instability.
Film, Technology and Science
Mary Ann Bella, Bella International Productions, Inc.; Carl Bowin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Barbara Confino, digital artist
Three distinctly unique filmmakers will discuss the relationship between science and film. Bella, writer, producer and director, has created many films about science and scientists. Confino, digital artist, writer and filmmaker, will present her video installation, THE CITY. Bowin, a scientist, has created a series of documentary films for public television. Discussion will explore the relationship between science and art, particularly the expressive possibilities that science and technology present the artist and ways in which film can support public understanding of science.
Polymaths, Meta-creation and Mental Model Building
Opening with an invited presentation, this session of contributed presentations explores the minds of scientists and humanists, and the relationships between creation and discovery.
Invited Speaker and Moderator: Arts and Science Together: Polymaths, the Royal Society, and the Birth of Modern Science
Minor Myers, Illinois Wesleyan
Contributed Presentations:
Art and Science: Creation vs. Discovery
Morton Tavel, Vassar College; Judith Tavel, Columbia-Greene Community College
Trees of History in Evolutionary Biology and the Historical Sciences
Robert J. O'Hara, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Human Knowledge: Models :: Metaphors :: Scientists :: Humanists :: Genes :: Survival
G. Arthur Mihram, Princeton, New Jersey; Danielle Mihram,
University of Southern California
The presentation will emphasize the striking resemblance between the metaphorical process of men of letters (humanists) and the
scientific method employed by scientists and, to a degree, engineers. We shall describe the metaphorical process as a six-stage 'model-building process' which relates to the verbal expression of the analogy formed whenever a researcher arrives at the 'Aha!'
phenomenon, a confirmation of which was presented in the Nobel Prize Acceptance Address of the ethologist Konrad Lorenz. We proceed also to show that the Scientific Method can be historically established as a 'model-building process', but strikingly this is the very same model-building process by which humanists conducted their research over centuries. Furthermore, we show that the mental model-building process, common to not only Mankind but also the 'higher' animal species, is itself merely the mimicry of the other chemico-biological process by which both plant and animals have conducted their respective survivals. We thus conclude that indeed the humanist and the scientist should be only one culture, not C. P. Snow's two.
11:30a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Science, the Arts and the Humanities: Making the Public Case
Moderators: George Bugliarello, Polytechnic University; Catharine R. Stimpson, New York University
Panelists: Robert Connor, National Humanities Center; Jack Gibbons, Resource Strategies; Gail M. Leftwich, Federation of State Humanities Councils
One of the features of contemporary society is the increasing number of scientific issues of public significance which require
discussion of human values. Policy debates about such issues as gene therapy, bioengineered food, global warming, biomedical
research, evolution, and the "ownership" of scientific knowledge quickly reveal the inextricable intertwining of science and human experience—the stuff of humanities. Both cultures have much to gain from working together to foster renewed public interest in the work that scientists do, the human implications of that work, and a greater understanding of the complex relationship between science, culture, government and the marketplace.
12:30-2:00 p.m.
Lunch Break
2:00- 2:45 p.m.
John P. McGovern Science and Society Lecture
One Culture: The Commonalities And Differences Between The Arts And The Sciences
Roald Hoffmann, Cornell University
The postulate of a rift between scientists and technologists on one hand, and humanists and artists on the other, is criticized on several grounds. Using case studies from chemistry, poetry, painting and ceramics a case is made for an underlying unity of science and the arts. The common elements of these human activities are creation with craftsmanship, concisely communicated, in a crosscultural and altruistic way, with aesthetics figuring importantly in a search for
understanding of the universe around and within us. But
there be differences…
2:45 –3:00 p.m.
Refreshment Break
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November 8-9, 2001