Complexism involves the extension of the world-view suggested by complexity science into the problem space of the arts and humanities. In doing so complexism provides a higher synthesis that subsumes both modern and postmodern concerns, attitudes, and activities. Complexism provides an intellectual meeting ground where 20th century conflicts between science and the humanities can be reconciled.

For a provisional overview see
Complexism and evolutionary art.

While I'll try my best to make entries here of value, please understand that I'm using this blog as a sort of scratch pad. I'm going to feel free at times to speculate wildly, change my mind, contradict myself, not include citations, and otherwise brainstorm.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Art and science are not the same

I frequently hear opinions about the dissolution of boundaries between various disciplines. For example the notion that there is no difference between art and science. Or that mathematics is a form of science.

To be sure interdisciplinary work is in vogue. And frankly it's something that I've always taken for granted and practiced on my own and with others. But it seems to me there are important and useful differences between various disciplines and something is lost when that is forgotten.

A place to start might be to ask why are there multiple disciplines to begin with. At the time of Leonardo Di Vinci it was possible to simultaneously practice a mastery of art and science at the then highest level. Not that many did, but it was within the realm of possibility. That seems to no longer be the case. Each field and subfield is so competitive and richly populated that success requires focused attention. Mastery of all is beyond anyone's grasp.

Some see the formation of hyper-competitive distinct disciplines as something peculiar to western capitalist society in the modern age. On the other hand even in the most "primitive" societies there are often distinct roles for the shaman, the warrior, and the farmer.

My own view is that while there are economic realities that encourage division of labor and specialization, the differences among the disciplines are real and inescapable. And that is because those differences are rooted in universal modes of experience.

When the self encounters the other there are two significant groupings of experience. First there is the relationship between the self and the apparent world. And second there is the relationship between the self and other people. Some might wonder whether the second is really a subset of the first. I would argue that humans are so fundamentally social and inevitably dependent on others that human relations deserve separate consideration. And there are good reasons to think that we are hardwired to treat other humans as a special case.

When we encounter the world this happens in two relatively distinct experiential modes. There is an outward mode where the senses are alive with input, our bodies manipulate external objects as output, and our minds are engaged with the processing of both. But there is also an inward mode where sensory and bodily activity is diminished, and the mind is occupied with abstractions, concepts, emotions, memories, and other mental objects.

In normal life, of course, we are constantly shifting between the inward and the outward. This may happen very quickly. But there are also times of concentrated effort where we sustain an outward (e.g. sports ) or inward (e.g. contemplation) stance. I trust that most people would agree that sometimes they look outward and sometimes they look inward.

When we encounter other people there are also two kinds of relatively distinct experiential modes in play. There are those experiences that can be confidently communicated and independently experienced. And then there are experiences that resist communication and verification.

The former we can call public. This doesn't mean the encounter must be publicized, it just means that in principle the experience can be communicated to others fully and reliably. And most of all they are experiences where we can invite others to "see for themselves" and ascertain whether or not their experience matches ours.

The latter we can call private. Again, this doesn't refer to experiences that we keep secret. Rather it refers to experiences with significant aspects that are in principle ineffable. Try as we may, any description falls qualitatively short of the mark. And most of all they are experiences that others may or may not have, and we can never know if their experience matches ours.

The public versus private distinction may at first sound obscure, but in fact it's something we deal with daily. For example, we can have a public experience of measuring the wavelength of red light with a spectrometer. We can ask another person to use their spectrometer and verify the wavelength we measured. What we can't ask another person to do is verify that our aesthetic perception of red is the same as their perception of red. (This brings us to the notion of qualia and to some extent what John Searle has called "first person ontology").

Combining these two polarities we are left with four modes of encounter between the self and the other. This is illustrated below:





Each quadrant represents one of these four modes. For example, there are times when we are facing outward having experiences that others can, in principle, confidently duplicate. Measuring the distance between two points would be an example. There are other times when we look inward and have experiences that others can never, even in principle, confidently experience for themselves. Grief due to the passing of a loved one is an example. While it seems certain that all healthy humans are capable of something called grief, we can never be sure of what that feels like for another person.

There are, however, inward experiences that can be duplicated and verified by others. An example would be proving the Pythagorean theorem. There are also outward experiences that have significantly private aspects. We can't really know whether my experience of a beautiful sunset is the same as your experience of that same sunset.

These four modes are experienced by all humans at various times and places. We move fluidly between them, often very quickly and typically without making any special note of it.

These four modes of encounter correspond to what I consider the 4 major discipline areas that can be further subdivided to include many others. This is illustrated below:





In the next post I'll explain how each of the four discipline areas relate to each other. For now it's enough to say that there are real differences between the disciplines, and that those differences correspond to the four inevitable modes of encounter that make up human experience.