THE FUZZY BOUNDARY: SCIENCE AND ART
Hoffmann, Roald. 2003rd Pages 91-99 in Enrique Martínez Celaya. Poetry in Process CU Art Museum, Boulder, Martínez Celaya Colorado.
Enrique: Let's talk about the importance of aesthetics in science. Does the concept of beauty in science even matter?
RH: The concept of beauty is of great importance for science, even if he has in our tools, scientific treatise, officially nothing to seek. The problem is that confused many people, particularly reductionist thinking physicist beauty with simplicity. They say: This equation must be right because she's beautiful, is so simple. But the world is wonderfully complex, and our task is to discover beauty in this mess.
EMC: In view of this complexity is the longing for a simpler world understandable - a world in which all the problems with simple, familiar agents can be solved, in which everything looks different, can be reduced to something familiar. Perhaps there is only two philosophical approaches - the quest for equality in things that look different, and the search for differences in things that seem the same.
RH: This is one of the great dualities, perhaps the most important of all. The question of identity drives the chemical without having to know about it. That's why I called one of my books and The Same and Not the Same. When I was younger, I was interested above all for the equality of things - I wanted to explain the totality of the molecules with a single theory. However, with time I understood how important diversity is.
EMC: Keep the elimination of all mystery for a basic condition of science?
RH: Yes. Science is a process of demystification - not the desecration. You discover new, wonderful, important things.
EMC: things that enrich our relationship with the world.
RH: Exactly. Who knows something about the aerodynamics of the wings of a falcon, will admire even more his glide. The science is based on many attempts to intervene in an existing system - to find out how something works, we isolated this molecule interferes with that system. This intervention is sometimes problematic.
EMC: When exactly will it cause problems?
RH: If there is obviously invasive, such as in the section [I've said to me is a doctor lost ...], even though this is often the only way to learn more about the overall context. It may be that an intrusive science also encourages an overly mechanistic view of the world.
EMC: A "good" scientists should also keep in view of a detail of the big picture in mind. But the science suggests, despite all its faults and not a bridge between nature and spirit?
RH: A very natural bridge, yes. They explained to us what happens in nature. But we need science to reflect on a sunset or the care of our olive tree?
EMC: If you are a poet, a different approach to the world?
RH: Sometimes, yes. I include the holistic nature in its entirety in my work. About the science, I can not express emotions like love and grief, loss and gain. Poetry is the science is very much related, they can also observe. One thing she has ahead of science, however - the reflection.
EMC: I often yearn after, to provide holistic considerations must content myself with my work but usually with fragments of experience.
RH: All the scientists!
EMC: A scientist who does not feel comfortable in his skin ... Because only the art is able to reconcile the whole and the fragment or detail to each other, I'm convinced. And in this unit I find echoes of that call other than what spirituality - as in Celan's poems. The chemical also has a spiritual side?
RH: Of course, there are beautiful molecules, complex functions, the beauty of diversity - substitutions. The way in which a synthesis achieved the goal of the intuitive leaps in a structure determination. The logic of catalysts and intermediates. Simply the knowledge of how things work.
They asked me for the spiritual in science, Enrique. Let me reverse the question: If we assume that art is spiritual, then what is the material?
EMC: Art is not necessarily spiritually, especially in the current climate. Many see the call for an expression of spiritual content of confusion or backwardness. Such arguments stir frequently compared by a distrust of the possibilities of art with other disciplines. It seems that the people wanted to argue that art strikes the same way as science, philosophy and entertainment, all of which perform their task with flying colors. I believe that this uncertainty does not bring us further. In my view art begins where the other disciplines are reaching their limits. But from here the path leads into the unknown, we are confronted with things that defy explanation. More we can not say it. Your question about the role of the material in art is interesting, it has a lot to do with what I just said. I think the task of the material is to ground the artists to give art a certain degree of traction. Loose material arts, as a purely conceptual work, can liberate the artist, but also confusing.
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EMC: What gives you the poetry, you will not find in science?
RH: The answers of science, as "beautiful" they may be, are restricted in some way, because the questions they will always require a clear solution. But the meaning of life can thus not explain the problems we face, are often highly complex -. There is no simple solution, we can approach us
only for a short time experiencing something like not even in your art?
EMC: I'd like to give with the little that I know satisfied but it's not working. In me is still burning, the longing for solutions, for answers to fundamental questions that you raise here. My work is an attempt to bring clarity into my life. For Kant, the essential condition of art is the unselfishness, to me, however, art has something to do with inner necessity.
RH: I think, Kant and many in the mistaken theory of aesthetics, if they turn out in assessing the beauty of an object to preserve its impartiality and condemn the utility. I believe that art springs from the profound interest in a matter. And usefulness can also transform.
EMC: I agree with you. Usefulness can be determined, for example, what happens in a work or not, and thereby define the exterior. The "face" of my work is more or less influenced by ethical criteria, which are inextricably linked with my beliefs. For it is the form rather something organic, is not it?
RH: Each poem has a form. Sometimes that's what I have to say, prosaic, or it proves to be prosaic. In order to give it more emphasis, I express it in verse. Each poem appears as if by his own form to find him. So like I imagine it to be in the visual arts.