The resonances between Indigenous art and images captured by microscopes
Rich visual parallels between Indigenous artworks and microscopic
natural structures hidden in the world around us reveal unexpected and
intriguing similarities that can deepen our respect for our country and
its stories.
A new touring exhibition
in Sydney, bringing microscopy and Indigenous art together, explores
these images, which pass on knowledge and shape our understanding of the
world. Their resonances derive from the similar perspectives of the
imagery, and symmetries hidden in nature.
The microscopic images (known as micrographs) were captured on
transmission electron microscopes, which create enlarged projections of a
thin, sample slice and reveal a flat, top-down image, similar to many
of the artworks. Another similarity comes from the natural forms and
patterns found at the microscopic, landscape and cosmic scale.
In Indigenous cultures, stories shared and held in paintings record
how the land and creatures were created, how they function together and
how people relate to them.
Read more:
'Dreamtime' and 'The Dreaming': who dreamed up these terms?
For researchers, microscopic images reveal the tiniest structural
details of the natural world. With experience and the knowledge passed
down from previous generations, scientists read these stories and expand
our understanding as they strive to answer the question “how and what
makes the world function as it does?” (Or, as Goethe wrote in Faust,
“how and what holds the world together at its innermost core”.)
Twenty one Indigenous artists from around Australia have created new
works for the exhibition that demonstrate a connection between their
stories and microscopic images of related parts of our country.
These artworks are paired with images of things, such as molecules or
crystals, taken by scientists using microscopes. Below is a selection
of images.
Birnoo country (artist Gordon Barney) and white ochre
The overlapping plates of the ochre mineral are reminiscent of the rows of hills in Gordon’s country. White Ochre.Hongwei LiuBirnoo Country.Gordon Barney, Warmun Art Centre
Witchetty grub dreaming (artist Jennifer Napaljarri Lewis) and moth sperm
Jennifer’s painting shows women collecting witchetty grubs. These can
be eaten at all stages of their life cycles. Without the structures
shown in the micrograph, sperm wouldn’t function and moths’ life cycle
would be broken. Moth Sperm. Greg RouseWitchetty Grub Dreaming.Jennifer Napaljarri Lewis, Warlukurlangu Artists of Yuendumu
Brush-tail possum dreaming (artist Judith Nungarrayi Martin) and ribosomes
The dark dots in the micrograph are ribosomes.
These tiny molecular machines are responsible for producing the vast
array of different proteins that make up the bodies of all living
things, including possums and people. Ribosomes.Image created at the University of SydneyJanganpa Jukurrpa (Brush-tail Possum Dreaming) – Mawurrji.Judith Nungarrayi Martin, Warlukurlangu Artists of Yuendumu
Sandhills dreaming (artist Vanessa Nampijinpa Brown) and atoms in quartz
The crystal structure revealed in the micrograph is fundamental to
the sand making up the sandhills that Vanessa paints in her story. Atoms in Quartz.Hongwei LiuNgalyarrpa Jukurrpa (Sandhills Dreaming)Vanessa Nampijinpa Brown, Warlukurlangu Artists of Yuendumu
Gathering bush tucker (artist Kerry Madawyn McCarthy) and gum leaf cells
The cells in this gum leaf are reminiscent of the rocks and coastal
landscape of Kerry’s painting. Her people move through the landscape to
collect food just as carbon dioxide moves through the leaf spaces to
cells, where it is converted to food for the plant. Gum Leaf.Minh Huynh, Elinor Goodman and Margaret BarbourGathering Bush Tucker.Kerry Madawyn McCarthy
Dry River bed (artist Kurun Warun) and blood flow in a fish eye
The red areas of Kurun’s painting indicate the life blood that still
survives in the dry river bed. The parallel to the red blood cells in
the fish eye are obvious. Fish Eye – Blood Flow.Shaun CollinDry River Bed.Kurun Warun
Skin (artist Joshua Bonson) and collagen fibrils
Joshua paints crocodile skin as a celebration of his totem, the
saltwater crocodile. He also sees his paintings as a representation of
landscape. Collagen is the fundamental protein found in skin and gives
it its strength and toughness. This is a beautiful connection at both
the physical and philosophical levels. Collagen Fibrils.Anne SimpsonSkin.Joshua Bonson
Water dreaming (artist Lola Brown) and river red gum and water transport vessel
The story in Lola’s Water Dreaming painting involves two river red
gum trees. River red gums line inland water courses and are essential to
Aboriginal life. The vessels that transport water up through the plants
have thickened rings for support. This later becomes the wood of the
trees. River Red Gum Leaf.Minh Huynh, Elinor Goodman and Margaret BarbourPlant water transport tubes (xylem)Anne SimpsonWater Dreaming.Lola BrownStories and Structures – New Connections
has been conceived and curated by Dr Jenny Whiting from Microscopy
Australia. It is currently on display at the University of Wollongong.
Texto de Andreas Malm United Land, imagens de François Ronsiaux
A noção de que adentramos uma nova era, a da humanidade como força geológica, foi sugerida pela primeira vez em 2000, em um artigo de Paul Crutzen e Eugene Stoermer traduzido com exclusividade pela PISEAGRAMA e disponível em nosso site. Aqui, Andreas Malm sugere que essa era, chamada de Antropoceno, talvez não seja a época geológica de toda uma espécie, mas somente de alguns poucos humanos.
Oano passado foi o mais quente já registrado na história. Mesmo assim, a principal fonte geradora de energia no mundo não foi a luz solar, a força dos ventos, o gás natural ou o petróleo, mas o carvão. O crescimento nas emissões globais – de 1% ao ano na década de 1990 para 3% neste milênio, até o presente momento – é impressionante. E essa escalada aconteceu paralelamente ao aumento do nosso conhecimento a respeito das terríveis consequências do uso de combustíveis fósseis.
Quem está nos conduzindo em direção ao desastre? Uma resposta radical seria a dependência do sistema econômico da extração e do uso de energia fóssil. Algumas pessoas, no entanto, prefeririam identificar outros culpados.
A Terra está atualmente no “Antropoceno”: a época da humanidade. Bastante difundido, esse conceito sugere que a sociedade é a nova força geológica a transformar o planeta, levando-o a se tornar irreconhecível, especialmente devido à queima de quantidades espantosas de carvão, petróleo e gás natural.
De acordo com muitos estudiosos, essa degradação é o resultado de humanos agindo segundo suas predisposições inatas. É o destino inescapável para um planeta submetido à lógica da continuidade a qualquer custo. De fato, os defensores dessa ideia não podem argumentar diferentemente, pois se tal dinâmica de degradação tivesse um caráter mais contingencial, a narrativa de uma espécie inteira ascendendo à supremacia biosférica seria algo difícil de defender.
A referida teoria se centra em um elemento clássico: o fogo. A espécie humana é a única que pode manipular o fogo e, portanto, é quem destrói o clima. Quando nossos ancestrais aprenderam a incendiar as coisas, eles detonaram um processo regido por aquela lógica da continuidade. Esse ponto, de acordo com os proeminentes cientistas climáticos Michael Raupach e Josep Canadell, foi “o gatilho evolucionário essencial do Antropoceno”, que levou a humanidade diretamente para “a descoberta de que energia poderia provir não apenas de carbono derivado de detritos orgânicos, mas também de carbono derivado de detritos de combustíveis fósseis, inicialmente do carvão”.
United Land, François Ronsiaux
O “motivo fundamental” para a atual queima de combustíveis fósseis seria que “muito antes da era industrial, uma espécie particular de primatas aprendeu como usufruir das reservas de energia armazenadas no carbono detrital”. Seguindo o raciocínio, o fato de eu ter aprendido a andar no meu primeiro ano de idade é o motivo de eu saber dançar salsa hoje. Quando a humanidade colocou fogo na primeira árvore morta, isso só podia resultar, um milhão de anos depois, na queima de um barril de petróleo.
Nas palavras de Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen e John R. McNeill: “O fato de nossos ancestrais terem dominado o fogo garantiu à humanidade o monopólio de uma ferramenta poderosa, indisponível a outras espécies, que nos colocou no longo caminho para o Antropoceno”. Nessa narrativa, a economia fóssil é criação justamente da humanidade, ou do “macaco-fogo, Homo pyrophilus”, como na versão popularizada do pensamento sobre o Antropoceno proposta por Mark Lyna, cuja obra leva o título, mais que apropriado, de A Espécie Divina.
É certo que a habilidade de manipular fogo foi condição necessária para o começo da queima de combustíveis fósseis em larga escala, na Inglaterra, no início do século XIX. Mas teria sido também a causa disso?
Um fator importante aqui é a estrutura lógica da narrativa sobre o Antropoceno: é como se um traço de caráter universal da espécie tivesse que ser o que conduz a época geológica dessa mesma espécie, ou então isso seria problema apenas de algum subconjunto dela. Mas a história da natureza humana pode ser contada de muitas formas, tanto para falar de Antropoceno quanto para outras partes do discurso sobre mudança climática.
Em um estudo presente na antologia Engaging with Climate Change (Engajando-se na causa da mudança climática), o psicanalista John Keene apresenta uma explicação um tanto original sobre por que humanos poluem o planeta e se recusam a parar. Na infância, a pessoa elimina dejetos sem limites e aprende que uma mãe cuidadosa vai levar embora o cocô e o xixi e vai limpar o bumbum.
Como consequência, humanos estão acostumados à prática de estragar seu entorno. “Acredito que esses encontros sucessivos contribuem para a crença de que o planeta é uma ‘privada-mãe’ ilimitada, capaz de absorver nossos produtos tóxicos infinitamente”.
Mas onde estão as provas de qualquer conexão entre queima de combustíveis fósseis e defecação na infância? O que dizer sobre todas as gerações de pessoas que, até o século XIX, dominavam ambas as artes, mas nunca esvaziaram os depósitos de carbono da Terra e os jogaram na atmosfera? Seriam eles cagadores e queimadores apenas esperando para atingir todo o seu potencial?
É fácil rir de certas formas de psicanálise, mas tentativas de atribuir a lógica da continuidade a qualquer custo às peculiaridades da espécie humana estão condenadas ao vazio. Algo que existe desde sempre e em todo lugar não pode explicar por que uma sociedade diverge de todas as outras e desenvolve algo novo – como a economia fóssil, que só surgiu há dois séculos, mas se tornou tão enraizada que nós a reconhecemos como a única com a qual podemos produzir.
François Ronsiaux
Ofato, no entanto, é que o discurso climático dominante é inundado de referências à humanidade como tal, à natureza humana, ao empreendimento humano ou à espécie humana como a grande vilã conduzindo o trem. Em A Espécie Divina, lê-se: “O poder de Deus está cada vez mais sendo exercido por nós. Somos os criadores da vida, mas também seus destruidores”. Esse é um dos vieses mais comuns nesse discurso: nós todos, você e eu, criamos essa bagunça juntos e a pioramos todos os dias.
Aí entra Naomi Klein, que em This Changes Everything (Isso Muda Tudo) apresenta como o acúmulo de capital joga combustível no fogo que hoje consome o sistema da Terra. Despachando sem cerimônias toda a conversa sobre o humano maldoso, ela escreve: “Estamos parados no mesmo lugar, porque as ações que nos dariam a melhor chance de evitar uma catástrofe – e beneficiariam a vasta maioria – são extremamente ameaçadoras para uma elite minoritária que controla nossa economia, processos políticos e a maioria das mídias”.
Como os críticos respondem? “Klein descreve a crise climática como um confronto entre o capitalismo e o planeta”, diz o filósofo John Gray no jornal The Guardian. “Seria mais acurado descrever a crise como um choque entre as demandas da humanidade, sempre em expansão, e um mundo finito”. Gray não está sozinho. Esse cisma emerge como grande divisão ideológica no debate climático, e defensores do consenso dominante estão reagindo.
Na London Review of Books, Paul Kingsnorth, um escritor britânico que há muito argumenta que o movimento ambiental deveria se dissolver e aceitar o colapso total como nosso destino, contesta: “Mudança climática não é algo que um pequeno grupo de pessoas maldosas nos impôs”; “no final das contas, todos nós estamos implicados nisso”. Essa, diz Kingsnorth, “é uma mensagem menos palatável do que aquela que vê um grupo de 1% avacalhando o planeta e os outros nobres 99% em oposição, mas é mais próxima da realidade”.
Será que é mesmo mais próxima da realidade? Seis fatos simples demonstram o contrário. Em primeiro lugar, o motor a vapor é amplamente e corretamente visto como a locomotiva inicial da lógica da continuidade a qualquer custo. A partir daí a combustão do carvão foi ligada pela primeira vez à espiral sempre em expansão da produção de commodities.
Ainda que seja banal comentar, motores a vapor não foram adotados por representantes natos da espécie humana. A escolha de um impulsor primário para a produção de commodities não pode ter sido uma prerrogativa da espécie, já que, para começar, isso pressupôs a instituição do trabalho assalariado. Foram os donos dos meios de produção que instalaram o novo motor primário. Composta por homens brancos, essa classe de pessoas (uma pequena minoria, mesmo na Inglaterra) formava uma fração infinitesimal da humanidade no início do século XIX.
François Ronsiaux - extinção
Em segundo lugar, quando imperialistas britânicos entraram no norte da Índia naquela mesma época, eles encontraram veios de carvão que, para sua surpresa, já eram conhecidos pelos nativos. De fato, os indianos tinham conhecimento básico de como cavar, queimar e gerar calor a partir do carvão. Ainda assim, eles nem ligavam para o combustível.
Os britânicos, por outro lado, queriam desesperadamente extrair o carvão – para propulsar os barcos a vapor nos quais eles transportavam as riquezas e a matéria-prima retiradas dos indianos, em direção à metrópole, além de seus próprios produtos de algodão, em direção aos mercados do interior. O problema era que nenhum trabalhador se oferecia para entrar nas minas. Assim, os britânicos tiveram que organizar um sistema de trabalho nos termos da servidão, forçando camponeses a entrar em poços para adquirir o combustível para a exploração da Índia.
Terceiro, a maior parte da escalada nas emissões se origina na República Popular da China. A origem dessa escalada é evidente: não é o crescimento da população chinesa, nem o consumo doméstico ou os gastos públicos, mas sim a enorme expansão da indústria manufatureira, implantada no país para explorar a mão de obra local, considerada, na virada do milênio, extraordinariamente barata e disciplinada.
Em quarto lugar, provavelmente não existe indústria que encontre mais oposição popular do que a de petróleo e gás. Como Klein bem exprime, comunidades locais têm se revoltado contra fraturas hidráulicas, exploração e dutos do Alasca até o delta do Nilo, passando por Grécia e Equador. Mas está contra eles um interesse recentemente declarado de forma clara por Rex Tillerson, presidente e CEO da ExxonMobil: “Minha filosofia é ganhar dinheiro. Se eu puder fazer dinheiro perfurando o solo, então é isso que eu quero fazer”.
Quinto, estados de economia avançada continuam a aumentar e a aprofundar a infraestrutura voltada para a exploração dos combustíveis fósseis de forma implacável – são construídas novas estradas, novos aeroportos, novas termelétricas a carvão –, quase nunca levando em conta a opinião da população. Apenas um intelectual um tanto cego, do tipo de Paul Kingsnorth, pode acreditar que “todos estamos implicados” nessas políticas.
François Ronsiaux
Quantos americanos estiveram envolvidos nas decisões de ampliar a cota de carvão no setor de energia elétrica – o que levou ao aumento da participação do carbono na economia dos Estados Unidos em 2013? Quantos suecos deveriam ser culpados pela construção de uma nova estrada no entorno de Estocolmo – o maior projeto de infraestrutura na história moderna do país – ou pela assistência do governo a termelétricas a carvão na África do Sul?
Sexto fato, e talvez o mais óbvio: poucos recursos são consumidos de forma tão desigual quanto a energia. Os 19 milhões de habitantes de Nova Iorque consomem mais energia do que 900 milhões de habitantes da África Subsaariana. Um canadense comum pode consumir até mil vezes mais energia do que um pastor africano da região do Sahel – e estamos falando de um canadense mediano, não de um que seja dono de três casas, cinco carros utilitários e um avião particular.
Um cidadão americano comum emite mais poluentes do que 500 cidadãos da Etiópia, Chade, Afeganistão, Mali ou Burundi. Quanto emite um milionário americano – e quantas vezes mais do que um trabalhador dos Estados Unidos ou do Camboja – ainda não foi computado. O fato é que a ação de uma pessoa sobre a atmosfera varia tremendamente dependendo do local onde ela nasceu. E, dessa forma, “humanidade” fica sendo um conceito muito abstrato para carregar o peso dessa culpa.
A nossa época geológica não é exatamente da humanidade, mas do capital. É claro que uma economia fóssil não precisa necessariamente ser capitalista: a União Soviética e seus países satélites tinham mecanismos de crescimento também ligados a carvão, petróleo e gás. Eles não produziam menos sujeira, fuligem ou emissões – talvez, até mais – do que seus inimigos da Guerra Fria. Então qual a razão para se investigar a destrutividade do capital se os países comunistas agiram de forma igualmente abismal?
Na medicina, uma pergunta parecida seria algo como por que concentrar os esforços de pesquisa no câncer e não na varíola? Ambos podem ser fatais! Mas apenas um deles ainda existe. A História encerrou o capítulo do sistema soviético, então voltamos para o início, onde a economia fóssil é ligada ao modo capitalista de produção – só que, agora, em escala global.
A versão stalinista merece sua própria investigação (tendo tido mecanismos de crescimento de natureza própria). Mas nós não vivemos nas minas de carvão de Vorkuta dos anos 1930. Nossa realidade ecológica, que nos cerca a todos, é o mundo fundado pelo dinheiro impulsionado pelo vapor, e há rotas alternativas que um socialismo responsável em termos ambientais pode seguir. Por isso o sistema econômico, e não a humanidade em si.
François Ronsiaux
Não obstante manifestações recentes, essa visão continua à margem do pensamento dominante. A ciência climática e a política são constantemente embasadas na narrativa Antropocena: pensamento voltado para a espécie; críticas à humanidade; autoflagelo coletivo indiferenciado; apelo à população geral de consumidores para que conserte o que fez – essas e outras piruetas ideológicas servem apenas para esconder o verdadeiro condutor do trem.
Apresentar certas relações sociais como se fossem propriedades naturais da espécie não é algo novo. “Desistoricizar”, universalizar, eternizar e naturalizar um modo de produção específico de determinado tempo e lugar faz parte das estratégias clássicas de legitimação ideológica.
Isso bloqueia qualquer perspectiva de mudança. Se a lógica da continuidade a qualquer custo é resultado da natureza humana, como poderíamos imaginar algo diferente? Faz sentido que os representantes do Antropoceno e aqueles que pensam de forma parecida apresentem falsas soluções, longe das que desafiam o capital fóssil, ou preguem derrota e desespero, como Kingsnorth.
De acordo com esse último, “está claro agora que acabar com a mudança climática é impossível” – e, aliás, construir um parque de produção de energia eólica é tão ruim quanto abrir outra mina de carvão, já que ambas profanam a paisagem. Sem antagonismo, nunca pode haver nenhum tipo de mudança na sociedade humana. O pensamento voltado para a espécie, no que tange à mudança climática, induz à estagnação. Se todo mundo é culpado, então ninguém o é.
Como citar este artigo
MALM, Andreas. O mito do antropoceno. PISEAGRAMA, Belo Horizonte, número 08, página 24 - 31, 2015.
Andreas Malm
Professor de Ecologia Humana na Universidade de Lund, na Suécia. Artigo publicado originalmente na revista Jacobin. http://jacobinmag.com
François Ronsiaux
Artista plástico e fotógrafo francês, é presidente da associação L'enterprise, em Paris. http://francoisronsiaux.com
A bittersweet record of artistic genius and unlived dreams.
Given my soft spot for the sketchbooks of famous artists and private notebooks of great creators, I was delighted to discover that, unbeknownst to most, Vincent van Gogh kept one. In an 1882 letter to his brother Theo, he wrote: “My sketchbook shows that I try to catch things ‘in the act.’” This private record of the artist’s genius, however, has remained obscured from public view. Thankfully, Molly Oldfield brings this hidden gem to light in The Secret Museum(public library) — the same magnificent tome that gave us the surprisingly dark story of how the Nobel Prize was born — which culls sixty never-before-seen “treasures too precious to display” from the archives and secret storage locations of some of the world’s top cultural institutions.
At Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, Oldfield finds the artist’s seven surviving sketchbooks, only four with their original cover, meticulously stored in the prints and drawings archive. The early sketchbooks bespeak Van Gogh’s religious upbringing and how he transformed that spiritual intensity into a creative practice. Oldfield writes:
Van Gogh had been all set for a deeply religious life but, aged 26, he transferred his religious zeal to art. He decided to become an artist instead, as he felt he wanted to leave “a certain souvenir” to humankind “in the form of drawings or paintings, not made to comply with this or that school but to express genuine human feeling.”
He moved to a rural town called Nuenen to live with his parents and begin learning his craft.
The first sketchbook
Leafing through countless pages of his sketchbooks, Oldfield reflects on this record of the artist’s creative journey and the bittersweet memento the sketchbook provides:
The first sketchbook has a royal blue, marbled inside cover and an empty pocket at the back. The first image he sketched in it was a church in Nuenen. He later painted this church inView of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen.
‘View of the Sea at Scheveningen’ by Vincent van Gogh, 1882
Curiously, the two paintings once hung in the Amsterdam museum but were stolen in 2002. It remains unknown where they are or who took them, and the pencil sketch from Van Gogh’s notebook endures as the only trace of the missing masterpieces.
‘Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen’ by Vincent van Gogh, 1884
The remaining pages of the first notebook are filled with drawings of people and places, capturing rural life in Nuenen. The second sketchbook, with a black cover, continues with glimpses of Nuenen, then turns to Antwerp, where Van Gogh moved in November of 1885. It was there he developed his passion for Japanese woodblock prints. Soon, however, the artist — who had been sustaining himself primarily on bread, coffee and absinthe — fell ill and moved to Paris to live with his brother, beginning his third sketchbook — a rectangular giant compared to his previous pocket-sized books lined in linen — which he filled with drawings of Parisian people and museum sculptures, as well as the female nudes who posed for him. Oldfield marvels:
In one pencil sketch, I recognized the windmill at Montmartre — a rural village at the time — which appears in lots of his paintings. Also in this book are sketches of flowers, Theo van Gogh’s laundry list and a letter from Vincent to Theo written in chalk. There is only one stray sheet, which the artist tore out in order to write a note to his brother announcing his arrival in the city.
Still enchanted by the countryside, however, Van Gogh left Paris in 1888 and settled in Arles in the south of France. There, she met a thirteen-year-old girl named Jeanne Calment, who sold the artist colored pencils at her uncle’s shop. She described Van Gogh as “dirty, badly dressed, and disagreeable.” (Curiously, Jeanne outlived the artist by more than a century and died in 1997 at the age of 122.) Disagreeable as he might have been, however, Van Gogh felt lonely and aspired to create an artist colony in Arles. Eventually, Paul Gauguin joined him and the two artists lived together in the famed Yellow House, with a painting of sunflowers gracing Gauguin’s room.
Van Gogh's sunflower sketches from the final sketchbook
It was only in the final sketchbook — an elegant one with a linen jacket and a tie to keep it closed — that Van Gogh sketched the first versions of his iconic seriesSunflowers. Oldfield laments:
Having never sold a painting in his life, at that moment, Van Gogh would never have conceived of a time when his sunflowers would be instantly recognized across the planet.
Van Gogh’s artistic dream, however, soon became a nightmare. Residents of Arles petitioned that he be evicted from the Yellow House on account of his madness and he soon moved into an asylum, where he continued to paint. In May of 1890, he left the clinic and move to the Auvers-sur-Oise commune in northwestern France to be close to his physician and his brother. Two months later, he shot himself, believing he was a failure and leaving behind his final sketchbook as the forlorn ghost of his unlived dream. Oldfield ponders:
There are two sketches of sunflowers in the final book. One shows 16 sunflowers in a vase; the other 12 stems in a vase. The drawings match up with two paintings that belong to the Van Gogh Museum; they have the same number of flowers in the vases. Perhaps he was sketching and remembering happier times.
[…]
I wonder, if he had known what would become of his paintings, would he have shot himself? And, if he had not, what other paintings might he have produced?
The Secret Museum absolutely fascinating in its entirety, featuring such rare cultural treasures as a piece of Newton’s apple tree painstakingly preserved at London’s Royal Society, an original Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum at New York’s Morgan Library, and Nabokov’s cabinet of butterfly genitalia held at Harvard.
Pink Floyd's first studio album in two decades will be without estranged ex-member Roger Waters but one vocalist from their last record is staying on - physicist Stephen Hawking.
Their album, The Endless River, is one of the year's most eagerly anticipated new releases and is due out on November 7.
But credits leaked on the internet list a song with the acclaimed scientist called Talkin' Hawkin'.
Hawking also appeared on the rock legends' last album, The Division Bell, in 1994.
On the song Keep Talking, Hawking's computerised voice begins by saying: "For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination."
The song credits for The Endless River, earlier reported by the music site Consequence of Sound, also showed that keyboardist Richard Wright wrote or co-wrote 12 of the 18 songs even though he died in 2008.
The album does not include Waters - the driving force behind the classic album The Wall in 1979, the year Wright originally left the band.
Waters quit Pink Floyd in 1985 and has been dismissive of his former bandmates' subsequent work.
In a recent posting on Facebook, Waters described Pink Floyd as consisting of remaining band members David Gilmour and Nick Mason.
"I have nothing to do with Endless River. Phew! This is not rocket science people, get a grip," Waters wrote.
“Art and physics, like wave and particle, are an integrated duality … two different but complementary facets of a single description of the world.”
“It’s part of the nature of man,” Ray Bradbury told Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke as theypeered into the future of space exploration,“to start with romance and build to a reality.”“What would happen,”Marshall McLuhanwondered in his seminal 1964 treatiseUnderstanding Media: The Extensions of Man,“if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one’s psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties?” More than a quarter century later, Leonard Shlain picked up the inquiry with added dimension in Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light (public library) — an exploration of how “the inscrutability of modern art and the impenetrability of the new physics” intersect in a shared system of thinking about how the world works. In the preface, Shlain — neither an artist nor a physicist himself — considers how his training as a surgeon lends him a unique perspective on the two fields and their cross-pollination:
A surgeon is both an artist and a scientist… Surgeons rely heavily on their intuitive visual-spatial right-hemispheric mode. At the same time, our training is obviously scientific. Left-brained logic, reason, and abstract thinking are the stepping-stones leading to the vast scientific literature’s arcane tenets. The need in my profession to shuttle back and forth constantly between these two complementary functions of the human psyche has served me well for this project.
Shlain lays out the basic premise of the parallel between the two fields:
Art and physics are a strange coupling. Of the many human disciplines, could there be two that seem more divergent? The artist employs image and metaphor; the physicist uses number and equation. Art encompasses an imaginative realm of aesthetic qualities; physics exists in a world of crisply circumscribed mathematical relationships between quantifiable properties. Traditionally, art has created illusions meant to elicit emotion; physics has been an exact science that made sense…
Yet, despite what appear to be irreconcilable differences, there is one fundamental feature that solidly connects these disciplines. Revolutionary art and visionary physics are both investigations into the nature of reality. Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist of the 1960s, declared, “Organized perception is what art is all about.” Sir Isaac Newton might have said as much for physics; he, too, was concerned with organizing perceptions. While their methods differ radically, artists and physicists share the desire to investigate the ways the interlocking pieces of reality fit together. This is the common ground upon which they meet.
Roy Lichtenstein, 'Sunrise,' 1963
Turning to the question of originality, Shlain argues that both art and physics are propelled by revolutionary insight — that transcendent clarity of vision that Rilke called a “conflagration of clear sight” — which reframes our understanding of the world:
Although the development of physics has always depended upon the incremental contributions of many original and dedicated workers, on a few occasions in history, one physicist has had an insight of such import that it led to a revision in his whole society’s concept of reality. . . .
Emile Zola’s definition of art: “Nature as seen through a temperament,” invokes physics, which is likewise involved with nature. The Greek word, physis, means “nature.” … The physicist, like any scientist, sets out to break “nature” down into its component parts to analyze the relationship of those parts. This process is principally one of reduction. The artist, on the other hand, often juxtaposes different features of reality and synthesizes them, so that upon completion, the whole work is greater than the sum of its parts. There is considerable crossover in the technique used by both. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “There is no science without fancy and no art without facts.”
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In addition to illuminating, imitating, and interpreting reality … artists create a language of symbols for things for which there are yet to be words.
This capacity for abstraction and symbolic representation, Shlain argues, is hard-wired into the evolution of our cognitive development:
Observe any infant as it masters its environment. Long before speech occurs, a baby develops an association between the image of a bottle and a feeling of satisfaction. Gradually, the baby accumulates a variety of images of bottles. This is an astounding feat considering that a bottle viewed from different angles changes shape dramatically: from a cylinder to an ellipse to a circle. Synthesizing these images, the child’s emerging conceptual faculties invent an abstract image that encompasses the idea of an entire group of objects she or he will henceforth recognize as bottles. This step in abstraction allows the infant to understand the idea of “bottleness.”
This rudimentary faculty remains central to how we make sense of the world as adults and how we grasp its immaterial subtleties:
Concepts such as “justice,” “freedom” or “economics” can be turned over in the mind without ever resorting to mental pictures. While there is never final resolution between word and image, we are a species dependent on the abstractions of language and in the main, the word eventually supplants the image.
When we reflect, ruminate, reminisce, muse and imagine, generally we revert to the visual mode. But in order to perform the brain’s highest function, abstract thinking, we abandon the use of images and are able to carry on without resorting to them. It is with great precision that we call this type of thinking, “abstract.” This is the majesty and the tyranny of language. To affix a name to something is the beginning of control over it. . . . Words, more than strength or speed, became the weapons that humans have used to subdue nature.
Children’s use of metaphor, we now know, sheds light on the evolution of human imagination — something Shlain argues is central to our ability to navigate the world. Adding to history’s most elegant definitions of art, he argues for the cultural role of the artist in fostering this crucial domain of understanding:
Because the erosion of images by words occurs at such an early age, we forget that in order to learn something radically new, we need first to imagine it. “Imagine” literally means to “make an image.” … [If] this function of imagination, so crucial to the development of an infant, is also present in the civilization at large, who then creates the new images that precede abstract ideas and descriptive language? It is the artist.
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Art [lives] not only as an aesthetic that can be pleasing to the eye but, as a Distant Early Warning system of the collective thinking of a society. Visionary art alerts the other members that a conceptual shift is about to occur in the thought system used to perceive the world.
One of Lisbeth Zwerger's imaginative illustrations for 'Alice in Wonderland.' Click image for more.
He cites art critic Robert Hughes’s assertion that “the truly significant work of art is the one that prepares the future” and adds:
Repeatedly throughout history, the artist introduces symbols and icons that in retrospect prove to have been an avant-garde for the thought patterns of a scientific age not yet born.
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Revolutionary art in all times has served this function of preparing the future.
Shlain returns to the common ground between art and physics, both of which serve as tools for mapping the unknown:
Both art and physics are unique forms of language. Each has a specialized lexicon of symbols that is used in a distinctive syntax. Their very different and specific contexts obscure their connection to everyday language as well as to each other. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy just how often the terms of one can be applied to the concepts of the other… While physicists demonstrate that A equals B or that X is the same as Y, artists often choose signs, symbols and allegories to equate a painterly image with a feature of experience. Both of these techniques reveal previously hidden relationships.
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Revolutionary art and visionary physics attempt to speak about matters that do not yet have words. That is why their languages are so poorly understood by people outside their fields. Because they both speak of what is certainly to come, however, it is incumbent upon us to learn to understand them.
Illustration from 'Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics' by CERN physicist Robert Gilmore. Click image for more.
Turning to the famous Tower of Babel myth — a Biblical story about humanity’s collaborative effort to build a tower that would reach the heavens, paralyzed by an indignant god’s spell that transformed people’s previously common language into garbled speech that made them unable to communicate and collaborate — Shlain draws a parallel to the artificial garbling of the shared language of art and physics:
History has been the record of our agonizingly slow resumption of work on this mythic public monument to knowledge. Gradually the parochial suspicions that had been abetted by large numbers of local dialects have given way to the more universal outlook of modern humankind. Currently, this work in progress is the creation of a global commonwealth. The worldwide community of artists and scientists is and has been in the forefront of this coalescence, offering perceptions of reality that erase linguistic and national boundaries. Reconciliation of the apparent differences between these two unique human languages, art and physics, is the next important step in developing our unifying Tower.
Both disciplines, he argues, first require us to ask how we know the world. Tracing the history of the answer from Plato to Descartes to Kant, Shlain points to philosophers’ distinction between “the inner eye of imagination and the external world of things” as a toxic and artificial divide that drove art and physics apart:
The faculty we use to grasp the nature of the “out there” is our imagination. Somewhere within the matrix of our brain we construct a separate reality created by a disembodied, thinking consciousness. This inner reality is unconnected to external space and exists outside the stream of linear time. When reminiscing about a day at the beach, we knit together elements of that day that no longer “actually” exist. We can run the events forward and backward with ease, and amend with alternate possibilities what we believe happened… Consciousness, resembling nothing so much as long columns of ants at work, must laboriously transfer the outside world piece by piece through the tunnels of the senses, then reconstruct it indoors. This inner spectral vision amounts to a mental “opinion” unique to each individual of how the world works… When an entire civilization reaches a consensus about how the world works, the belief system is elevated to the supreme status of a “paradigm,” whose premises appear to be so obviously certain no one has to prove them anymore.
Shlain points to the beginning of the 20th century, when Einstein’s theory of photons challenged two centuries of considering light a wave, as a turning point for the integration between art and physics. Suddenly, by acknowledging the contradictory duality of light as both a particle and a wave, science had to confront its basic tenet of objectivity and fixed laws. As Shlain puts it, “at the turn of the century, what was to be a surprising feature of quantum reality amounted to a Zen koan.”
Illustration by Vladimir Radunsky from 'On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein' by Jennifer Berne. Click image for more.
In 1926, Niels Bohr formalized this notion in his theory of complementarity, which stated that light was not either a wave or a particle, but was both a waveand a particle. Shlain writes:
As it turned out, light would reveal only one aspect of its nature at a time, resembling an odd carnival peep show. Whenever a scientist set up an experiment to measure the wavelike aspect of light, the subjective act of deciding which measuring device to use in some mysterious way affected the outcome, and light responded by acting as a wave. The same phenomenon occurred whenever a scientist set out to measure the particlelike aspect of light. Thus “subjectivity,” the anathema of all science (and the creative wellspring of all art) had to be admitted into the carefully defended citadel of classical physics. Werner Heisenberg, Bohr’s close associate, said in support of this bizarre notion, “The common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul is no longer adequate…. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.” According to the new physics, observer and observed are somehow connected, and the inner domain of subjective thought turns out to be intimately conjoined to the external sphere of objective facts.
From this revolutionary duality of light Shlain extracts a broader metaphor for his central thesis:
[Through] the complementarity of art and physics … these two fields intimately entwine to form a lattice upon which we all can climb a little higher in order to construct our view of reality. Understanding this connection should enhance our appreciation for the vitality of art and deepen our sense of awe before the ideas of modern physics. Art and physics, like wave and particle, are an integrated duality: They are simply two different but complementary facets of a single description of the world. Integrating art and physics will kindle a more synthesized awareness which begins in wonder and ends with wisdom.
In the remainder of Art & Physics, a mind-expanding read in its totality, Shlain goes on to trace the evolution of human thinking and knowledge from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance to the 20th century, exploring various aspects of the parallels between the two disciplines, from Einstein and Picasso’s “common vision” to the interplay between illusion and reality to how music integrates the reason of science with the emotional expressiveness of art. Complement it with Dorion Sagan (son of Carl) on how science and philosophy enrich each other.
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