Month: March 2018

         I really enjoyed Liv’s presentation. She took her project in a completely different direction than I took mine and that was cool to see. Her presentation was super personal and I appreciated that and I was very intrigued throughout her presentation. I liked that instead of picking one picture and encountering it, she took a belief and used pictures to enhance it. Her mode of communication was an essay with photos. Her essay alone was interesting and heartwarming and captured my attention, but her different photos of artwork at Children’s Hospital in Boston, or of her friend and other patients was what enhanced her essay even further. Seeing the pictures of Liv and her friend made the whole presentation even more personal and real, which made it even more inspiring. I would not say it gave me a fresh perspective, but furthered my previous perspective. I had noticed and stated how important art is in places like hospitals due to the positive energy it can bring to patients, their families, and staff members. Liv’s example of Children’s Hospital was a perfect one that furthered my belief in the ability of art to create positive uplifting energy. Liv’s presentation, found here, was inspiring, intriguing, personal, and had an important point of view, that should be shared

I found this chapter quite helpful. I found that I rely on a few devices. I rely on repetition the most I feel. Especially towards the end of my paper as ideas, concepts, or connections circle back around to conclude my paper. However, although I had quite a bit of repetition I made sure that the wording was not always the exact same, but tried to continue on the point or push it further each time I repeated a point or concept. I also noticed I used a lot of pointing terms, but must cold also be considered a transition term. Words like however, similarly,  or along a similar point were used as transitions, but also serve as pointing terms because they indicate to the reader if I am going to continue on with a concept further, or complicate it a bit in the following sentence. As for patterns I saw a lot of repetition throughout, but especially at the end. As well as transitions tended to be at the beginning of paragraphs and in between quotes or evidence used. I tended to put pointing terms in the middle of paragraphs when complicating points, leading into quotes, or furthering a concept with more evidence. I found a couple places that were a bit hard to follow but it was more so do to grammatical errors or weird wording, not necessarily the lack of connection.

Johan Lehrer’s main point in this article “The Future of Science… Is Art” is that in order to answer life deepest questions and gain more knowledge we will need to draw from both science and art. His closing statement that ties this main point and his entire essay together is, “.. science and art, so that each completes the other” (6). The greater point throughout the essay is that both art and science can benefit from one another. I could follow and agree this greater idea; however, specific examples, some quotes, and the intricate language used in the article made it hard for me to understand, or grasp every piece of information discussed. For me because the essay was a bit hard to follow, but I got the main point, it seemed as though the writing was a bit lengthy and hard to stay interactive with. I definitely had to remind myself to think of it as a conversation and to stay engaged at points.

That being said one way I made sure to stay engaged was by glossing the text in order to better understand words or phrase I did not get. Some words I had to look up included, lepidopterist, quantum, enigma, inception, paradigm, ephemeral, quaila, parse, arcane, quaint, non-euclidian, and zeitgeist.

Along with these I also looked up the required ones. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is the statement that its impossible to measure two properties of science at once. What I could grasp about “The Bridging Principle” from the essay is it is “the neural event that would explain how the activity of our brain cells creates the subjective experience of consciousness”. I believe it is looking at how events turn into consciousness from within the brain. Reductionism is analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon on a simpler more fundamental level, or the purpose of the phenomenon. A Synapse is the junction between the neurons where neurotransmitters diffuse. Epiphenomenon is a secondary byproduct of an event that does not cause or influence the event. A Holistic perspective is a type of view in which one is interested in engaging in. A metaphor is a phrase that compares two objects for symbolic reasons or understanding.

One person I choose to look up was Arthur Miller. His role in Lehrer’s paper was to show how as an academic he combined art into his studies. He is one of the first people mentioned because the greater conversation of the essay is the mutual benefits arts and sciences can have on one another and Miller is a great example this.

The second person I looked up was Brian Greene. He is a theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist. On the fourth page of the essay Lehrer writes, “… Brain Greene wrote, the arts have the ability to ‘give a vigorous shake to our sense of what’s real,’ jarring the scientific imagination into imagining new things”. The purpose of quoting Greene here is to show that slowly scientists are acknowledging the benefits art could have on science. The benefit stated here is how art can cause new ways of looking at science or new ways of trying to answer scientific questions.