Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism—the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components—has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and memory in sea slugs to shed light on the complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals. In Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Kandel shows how this radically reductionist approach, applied to the most complex puzzle of our time—the brain—has been employed by modern artists who distill their subjective world into color, form, and light. Kandel demonstrates through bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions how science can explore the complexities of human perception and help us to perceive, appreciate, and understand great works of art. At the heart of the book is an elegant elucidation of the contribution of reductionism to the evolution of modern art and its role in a monumental shift in artistic perspective. Reductionism steered the transition from figurative art to the first explorations of abstract art reflected in the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel explains how, in the postwar era, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis, Turrell, and Flavin used a reductionist approach to arrive at their abstract expressionism and how Katz, Warhol, Close, and Sandback built upon the advances of the New York School to reimagine figurative and minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book draws out the common concerns of science and art and how they illuminate each other.

The first edition of Connections was chosen by the National Association of Publishers (USA) as the best book in OC Mathematics, Chemistry, and Astronomy OCo Professional and ReferenceOCO in 1991. It has been a comprehensive reference in design science, bringing together in a single volume material from the areas of proportion in architecture and design, tilings and patterns, polyhedra, and symmetry. The book presents both theory and practice and has more than 750 illustrations. It is suitable for research in a variety of fields and as an aid to teaching a course in the mathematics of design. It has been influential in stimulating the burgeoning interest in the relationship between mathematics and design. In the second edition there are five new sections, supplementary, as well as a new preface describing the advances in design science since the publication of the first edition. Contents: Proportion in Architecture; Similarity; The Golden Mean; Graphs; Tilings with Polygons; Two-Dimensional Networks and Lattices; Polyhedra: Platonic Solids; Transformation of the Platonic Solids I; Transformation of the Platonic Solids II; Polyhedra: Space Filling; Isometries and Mirrors; Symmetry of the Plane. Readership: Polytechnic students, architects, designers, mathematicians and general readers."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In recent history, the arts and sciences have often been considered opposing fields of study, but a growing trend in drawing research is beginning to bridge this divide. Gemma Anderson’s Drawing as a Way of Knowing in Art and Science introduces tested ways in which drawing as a research practice can enhance morphological insight, specifically within the natural sciences, mathematics and art. Inspired and informed by collaboration with contemporary scientists and Goethe’s studies of morphology, as well as the work of artist Paul Klee, this book presents drawing as a means of developing and disseminating knowledge, and of understanding and engaging with the diversity of natural and theoretical forms, such as animal, vegetable, mineral and four dimensional shapes. Anderson shows that drawing can offer a means of scientific discovery and can be integral to the creation of new knowledge in science as well as in the arts.

Scientists are famous for believing in the proven and peer-accepted, the very ground that pioneering artists often subvert; they recognize correct and incorrect where artists see only true and false. And yet in some individuals, crossover learning provides a remarkable kind of catalyst to innovation that sparks the passion, curiosity, and freedom to pursue--and to realize--challenging ideas in culture, industry, society, and research. This book is an attempt to show how innovation in the "post-Google generation" is often catalyzed by those who cross a conventional line so firmly drawn between the arts and the sciences. David Edwards describes how contemporary creators achieve breakthroughs in the arts and sciences by developing their ideas in an intermediate zone of human creativity where neither art nor science is easily defined. These creators may innovate in culture, as in the development of new forms of music composition (through use of chaos theory), or, perhaps, through pioneering scientific investigation in the basement of the Louvre. They may innovate in research institutions, society, or industry, too. Sometimes they experiment in multiple environments, carrying a single idea to social, industrial, and cultural fruition by learning to view traditional art-science barriers as a zone of creativity that Edwards calls artscience. Through analysis of original stories of artscience innovation in France, Germany, and the United States, he argues for the development of a new cultural and educational environment, particularly relevant to today's need to innovate in increasingly complex ways, in which artists and scientists team up with cultural, industrial, social, and educational partners.

The intent of this volume is to provide an enticing review, for a general audience, of the very broad topic of connections between art and science; and the writing is deliberately casual and narrative rather than scholarly or encyclopedic. The scope is narrowed somewhat by emphasis on Western culture (with some examples from other civilizations) and by exclusion of literature. After overview chapters, the author delves into some specifics of architecture, decoration, painting and cognition, graphic design, and the performing arts, before concluding with a chapter on art and science symbiosis. The text is attractively produced and illustrated with some 200 (small) diagrams, photos, and reproductions. Strosberg is co-founder of Recontres Art et Science, an association in Paris that sponsors conferences and other events in collaboration with UNESCO. This work was originally published in French, in Paris, in 1999 by UNESCO (although its connection with that agency's mission is not entirely clear). c. Book News Inc.

In Hybrid Practices, essays by established and emerging scholars investigate the rich ecology of practices that typified the era of the Cold War. The volume showcases three projects at the forefront of unprecedented collaboration between the arts and new sectors of industrial society in the 1960s and 70s—Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), the Art and Technology Project at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (A&T), and the Artist Placement Group (APG) in the UK. The subjects covered include collaborative projects between artists and scientists, commercial ventures and experiments in intermedia, multidisciplinary undertakings, effacing authorship to activate the spectator, suturing gaps between art and government, and remapping the landscape of everyday life in terms of technological mediation. Among the artists discussed in the volume and of interest to a broad public beyond the art world are Bernd and Hilla Becher, John Cage, Hans Haacke, Robert Irwin, John Latham, Fujiko Nakaya, Carolee Schneemann, James Turrell, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Whitman. Prominent engineers and scientists appearing in the book’s pages include Elsa Garmire, Billy Klüver, Frank Malina, Stanley Milgram, and Ed Wortz. This valuable collection aims to introduce readers not only to hybrid work in and as depth, but also to work in and as breadth, across disciplinary practices where the real questions of hybridity are determined.

Venerated as god and goddess, feared as demon and pestilence, trusted as battle omen, and used as a proving ground for optical theories, the rainbow's image is woven into the fabric of our past and present. From antiquity to the nineteenth century, the rainbow has played a vital role in both inspiring and testing new ideas about the physical world. Although scientists today understand the rainbow's underlying optics fairly well, its subtle variability in nature has yet to be fully explained. Throughout history the rainbow has been seen primarily as a symbol&—of peace, covenant, or divine sanction&—rather than as a natural phenomenon. Lee and Fraser discuss the role the rainbow has played in societies throughout the ages, contrasting its guises as a sign of optimism, bearer of Greek gods' messages of war and retribution, and a symbol of the Judeo-Christian bridge to the divine. The authors traverse the bridges between the rainbow's various roles as they explore its scientific, artistic, and folkloric visions. This unique book, exploring the rainbow from the perspectives of atmospheric optics, art history, color theory, and mythology, will inspire readers to gaze at the rainbow anew. For more information on The Rainbow Bridge, visit: &

In the United States, broad study in an array of different disciplines â€"arts, humanities, science, mathematics, engineeringâ€" as well as an in-depth study within a special area of interest, have been defining characteristics of a higher education. But over time, in-depth study in a major discipline has come to dominate the curricula at many institutions. This evolution of the curriculum has been driven, in part, by increasing specialization in the academic disciplines. There is little doubt that disciplinary specialization has helped produce many of the achievement of the past century. Researchers in all academic disciplines have been able to delve more deeply into their areas of expertise, grappling with ever more specialized and fundamental problems. Yet today, many leaders, scholars, parents, and students are asking whether higher education has moved too far from its integrative tradition towards an approach heavily rooted in disciplinary "silos". These "silos" represent what many see as an artificial separation of academic disciplines. This study reflects a growing concern that the approach to higher education that favors disciplinary specialization is poorly calibrated to the challenges and opportunities of our time. The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education examines the evidence behind the assertion that educational programs that mutually integrate learning experiences in the humanities and arts with science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) lead to improved educational and career outcomes for undergraduate and graduate students. It explores evidence regarding the value of integrating more STEMM curricula and labs into the academic programs of students majoring in the humanities and arts and evidence regarding the value of integrating curricula and experiences in the arts and humanities into college and university STEMM education programs.