Reviews for Bulletin of the American Physical Society

The average rating for Bulletin of the American Physical Society based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-11 00:00:00 Carly Arakawa Oh, dear. This is probably one of the most infuriatingly frustrating books I have read in quite a long time. It could have been so much better. And this is the second time, within a short time span, that I feel duty-bound to post a not-so-positive review of a book that has been rated so highly by the overwhelming majority of readers. It is a book that does contain some very interesting and original insights, and it is well written in a beautiful, engaging and fluent prose; the author is also quite brilliant as an art critic, and proficient and knowledgeable as an art historian. But this is also a book that is deeply flawed, riddled with scientific (and historical) inaccuracies, defined by a questionable methodological approach, and directed at proving an outlandish and utterly unconvincing thesis. The overall thesis of this book is, condensed in a few words, that art manages, in some mysterious way, to pre-cognitively anticipate science. Some of the examples listed by the author are Cubism, Surrealism and Futurism anticipating, with "sibylline accuracy", the tenets of much modern physics such as special relativity. The author, rather than sharing the commonly accepted view that such new artistic forms of expression were an articulation of the social and cultural upheavals resulting from an accelerating pace of deeply transformative technological developments and its consequent disorienting effects ( in conjunction with the devastating effects on the social fabric originated from the two World Wars) attributes such new art forms to a mystically prescient character of art in general. Is modern art about foreseeing the future of scientific development (as the author states), or is it in reality about the deeply introspective psychological rendering of the existential angst and insecurity of modern Man, his new aesthetic sense resulting from a more sophisticated, complex, multifaceted and disorienting cultural and social environment? Personally, I think that there is no question that the latter is the more fitting answer. And the author does not limit this thesis to modern times: he also claims that "the precognition of the intuitive artist in the Renaissance foreshadowed the discoveries of the analytical scientist" What a big, missed opportunity to explore the real and interesting relationship affecting both art and science: the relationship between the conceptual and linguistic substrate available to a given society during a particular historical stage, and their influence to the the way science and art (and all forms of inquiries and representation) operate as a result. Or the equally interesting two-way relationship between the cultural environment in general (including the arts) and science (relationship which is one of the many themes that philosophy of science tries to address). Or even the fascinating role that a particular type of aesthetic sensibility can play in the development of mathematics and science (in some cases, even to the point of creating expectation of "beauty" as a criteria to scientific truth, like in the case of Dirac). Sadly, there is none of such themes in this book. The author does make some interesting points about the existence of intellectual paradigms and their importance as enablers of progress, but the overall approach and themes are unfortunately driven by the unsuccessful pursuit of the author's outlandish main hypothesis. In order to support his self-proclaimed revolutionary thesis, the author indulges into an exercise of very selective and disingenuous sampling, peppering the book with confusing if not misleading statements when describing physical theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics. Moreover, he has the infuriating tendency to select the most speculative theories or interpretations, rather than the current scientific consensus, and this is aggravated by the fact that the author does not disclose his peculiar approach. There are also such big logical jumps, and such an overall highly selective interpretation of available facts, that at times this book reads almost like a book of Nostradamus prophesies, or a treatise on Biblical Numerology. Let me list an extract of some of the inaccuracies, or questionable/confusing statements, that I found in this book: - the author virtually discounts, out of hand, much of the period of the Middle Ages, considering it almost as a sterile intermission between Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance (he calls it "the long night of the Dark Ages"): this view is so hopelessly outdated (it seems like something out of the 19th century) that it does not even deserve a detailed rebuttal. Clearly, the author is no historian. Moreover, the author's statement that the Christian Church did "set out to obliterate every work of art that remained from Classical Antiquity" is factually incorrect and it totally ignores the deep relationship between Christianity and the Classical World, as for example clearly visible in the deep interconnection with Platonism (Plotinus being a remarkably evident case). - page 133: special relativity "upsets the fundamental philosophical belief in the law of causality". This is a deeply flawed statement: special relativity is fully consistent with the causality principle. If two events are causally connected (if one lies within the light cone of the other) the causal order is preserved in all frames of reference. To break causality and have event A "causing" event B in one frame of reference, but event B "causing" event A in another frame of reference, you would need FTL (faster than light) travel. The author confuses this with relativity of simultaneity, which is the concept that distant simultaneity - whether two spatially separated events occur at the same time- is not absolute, but depends on the observer's reference frame. Moreover, special relativity does NOT mean arbitrary subjectivity, as each frame of reference can be mathematically translated into another frame with the appropriate Lorentz transformation. The author, like similar authors with an incomplete understanding of special relativity, has been misled by the term "relativity" - in reality special relativity is more about "invariance", based as it is on the constancy of the speed "c" and on the invariance of spacetime intervals under Lorentz coordinate transformations. - page 148: the author states, in relation to quantum mechanics, that "the observations and thoughts of the observer enter into the measurements of the real world - children at play, artists at work, and scientists measuring quantum effects are all creating reality". This seems to me a quite disingenuous playing, by the author, with speculative views in relation to the "measurement issue" in quantum mechanics. This seems just like one of the so many examples of "quantum woo" that sadly infest quite a few popularizations ("quantum woo": justification of irrational beliefs by obfuscatory references to quantum physics). And in any case, of course any agent carrying out any sort of activity "creates reality" - the action of the agent certainly influences it - and so what ? - the author relies heavily, and repeatedly, on the limiting, very special case of special relativity defined by the photon, being massless, traveling at speed "c". He is imagining an observer "riding a light beam", and using such case to "prove" that any form of modern art painting that flattens the picture, eliminating the traditionally perspectivist approach and thus removing the dimension of "depth", is the precursor of the relativistic length contraction that, at light-speed, reduces such dimension to zero. And that all paintings where the time is "transfixed" (like in Surrealistic paintings), or where many events are represented simultaneously in the canvas, are precursor to the relativistic effect of time dilation in special relativity (up to the point where, in the case of the photon, time itself stops and the photon has access to the totality of time). Well, apart from the preposterous and artificial character of such association, there are so many things wrong or at least misleading with the "physics" side of such example as used by the author, that I do not know even where to start! First of all, we simply can't get in a photon's frame of reference by definition, because the core tenet of special relativity is that lights travel at speed "c" in ALL frames to reference!: so you just can't get in a frame of reference where the photon would be at rest with respect to you - this would contradict the very nature of special relativity. This is actually what Einstein said in his "gedankenexperiment" - that you can't "catch up" with a photon. It is not possible to be in a rest frame of a photon. Also, I would question how sensical it actually is to consider a case where the Lorentz conversion factor "gamma" goes to infinity - when you get infinity values you have to be very careful before making any assumptions and taking any conclusions. You can say, in a metaphorical sense, that the photon "experiences no time", but even assuming that this is a meaningful statement we also need to take into account that, within the same considerations, that the photon travels zero distance; so the whole example is very dangerous and prone to misconception. Yes, you can always say that you can assume that you are traveling at speed asymptotically close to "c", but the whole example in any case seems preposterous and very forced. By the way, such examples of "simultaneity" can be seen in the cave paintings of the Lascaux Cave - does it mean that our artistically gifted human ancestors had some form of special relativity pre-cognition more than 20,000 years ago ? Come on... - page 221: the author states that "if Einstein lamented the absence of a vocabulary with which to communicate his remarkable theories, he had only to look to art to find the appropriate images". What does this actually mean ? Does really a Cubist painting represent in a more informative way, or has more explanatory power, than language, when it comes to the tenets of relativity, such as Lorentz invariance ? In my opinion this statement, in its generality, is virtually meaningless. - page 244: the author states that "in 1945, America alone stood triumphant among nations". Has the author ever heard of Stalingrad? Does he not know who was the actual major contributor to the defeat of Germany? - page 300: the author refers to "tachions" (particles supposed to travel faster than light and backwards in time) to confirm that time travel to the past is a possibility. Well, this is definitely a highly speculative hypothesis which has never been corroborated by even the flimsiest shred of evidence, and something against the current consensus - page 303: the author talks about "recursiveness of the geometry of non-Euclidean spacetime". This statement demands some serious clarification. Not all possible non-Euclidean spacetime geometries are "recursive". It depends on the curvature and topology: the best experimental data available so far points to a flat universe (not in a definite way, though). Within a flat universe, the main two topological options are the Euclidean space (which is not "recursive", using the author terminology) and the torus (which is "recursive"). There is also the chance of a universe of very slight negative curvature (in which case it would non-Euclidean, non-"closed") or a very slight positive curvature (in which case it would be non-Euclidean, "closed"). - page 345: the author states that "space was in fact a geometry and force is due to this feature of space". Here the author is referring to general relativity. While the author overall presentation of general relativity is not too bad (even if a bit confused), this particular statement should be rephrased to something like: "the curvature of spacetime is related to the present energy/momentum of matter/radiation, and any "object" follows a geodesic path along this (curved) spacetime, unless acted upon by a force". - page 359: "nothing of substance could exist on the other side of the event horizon because the gravity would crush the entity's atoms like so many grapes at harvest time". I guess the author is here referring to the tidal forces experienced when approaching a black hole. This is just a minor clarification, but in reality the point at which tidal forces become noticeable depends on the black hole's size. Contrary to popular belief, the strength of such tidal forces is inversely proportional to the size of the black hole. For a super massive black hole, such as those found at a galaxy's center, this point lies well within the event horizon, so an astronaut may cross the event horizon without noticing any tidal effect. On the contrary, for small black holes the tidal forces would kill even well before the astronaut reaches the event horizon. - page 362: the author talks about "wormholes" and "white holes" when dealing with the celestial objects named "quasars". Again, the author picks the most outlandish and speculative theories, rather than accepting the current overwhelming consensus that quasars are super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies. - the whole chapter 25 is garbage, and firmly in crackpot territory: the author here talks about weird concepts such as "human superconsciousness", "continuum of cosmic consciousness", and "ectoplasmic pool of awareness that exist in a higher dimension and subsumes individual minds". He talks about how "universal mind could exist in the four dimensions of the spacetime continuum and be missed or misperceived by three-dimensional humans". The author uses these nebulous and ill-formed concepts to support his hypothesis, and to explain why arts have demonstrated such "prescience". The best statement is in page 430, though: "universal mind most likely manifests itself in our coordinate systems as clairvoyance". What a load of New Age bullshit, I find myself forced to say here. It does look like it has been generated automatically by this kind of software: - page 427: the author states that "relativity and quantum mechanics both propose hypothetical circumstances where precognition would be possible ?" Really??? In what cases ? As in many other examples, the author just comes up with these obfuscatory statements without getting into any detail. I imagine he might be referring to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. Well, this phenomenon can't be used to transmit any information at speed faster than light. - page 430: the author states that Bohr's complementarity principle "proposes that there can be no such thing as objective reality". In reality, such principle simply holds that "particles" have complementary properties which cannot be observed or measured at the same time (for example, it is impossible to measure both the full "wave-like" and "particle-like" properties at a single moment - also, non-commuting observable can't be simultaneously measured with arbitrary precision, but this is a different story). That's all - such principle does not necessarily make any ontological claims in relation to objective reality. To conclude, I must highlight that this book is still an interesting and pleasurable read, containing some original and interesting insights, and some very intriguing connections; the author's knowledge and passion for the arts is evident in some of his beautiful commentaries (his description of Surrealist art, which by the way is my favourite current of modern art, is top-notch). Just do not take him too seriously when it comes to science or history. His main thesis is utterly unconvincing and the author thoroughly fails to prove it in any meaningful sense, but the book is still worth reading (even if just for its "artistic" side), albeit with some caution. 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 (after all, the copyright date of this book is 1991 - when the New Age esoteric, pseudo-scientific bullshit was still all the rage in a few countries - therefore I feel that some leniency is warranted)

Review # 2 was written on 2009-09-16 00:00:00 Philip Japely The full title of this book is Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light and it was written by a surgeon. I point out this last detail because I think non-professional works of high intellectual ambition are pretty rare. And well-executed ones are even rarer. I believe outsiders to an established discipline can often see patterns, make connections or hazard hypotheses that a trained professional either could not or would not do. Professional academics, scientists, artists and so forth who have spent years and years studying, practicing and executing their crafts can, and maybe should, possess a snob factor about this kind of book. I suppose I understand this stance, although I have a lot of musings about institutionalized disciplines and power structures of learning that I do not really want to get into right here. I offer, however, that I found Leonard Shlain's book about art and physics fascinating, well written and, insofar as I am equipped to say, well researched. Shlain examines correspondences in the visual arts and physics, from the classical period through the present. I found this a wonderful project, especially as Shlain's ultimate hypothesis is not that the arts were influenced by developments in the sciences, but that the arts in strange and obscure ways seem to, over time, prefigure scientific discoveries. That is, Shlain does not propose causality, but correspondence. I find this especially interesting because it seems so unexplainable. It is precisely the kind of hypothesis I would never expect to find in an institutionally-derived work. Additionally, an institutionally-derived work would likely never purport to marry art and physics in the first place - the arts and sciences are so often viewed in opposition to each other and not as complementary visions of the same reality. Shlain's final argument concerns an ultimate connectivity of cognitive states (and all time and matter) that occurs in a dimension we cannot perceive with our measly three-dimensional senses. Metaphorically, our individual-seeming, three-dimensional selves function like our cells, independently but nonetheless creating a unity of form and function, even of consciousness. In the case of cells the unity is us (or a cat, or a plant, etc.). In the case of us as cells...what is the unity we create? We simply cannot perceive this unity because we are locked in our three dimensionality. Some artists, as sensitive nodes, Shlain's argument runs, get a glimmer of this unity, translate it into their art and, thereby, provide effective visual metaphors for scientific discoveries that have not yet occured and that are exceedingly difficult to imagine as they precisely pertain to reality exterior to our three dimensions (he uses primarily Einstein's theories concerning gravity and how bizarrely matter behaves at the speed of light). This may sound far out, but I would suggest you give this book a fighting chance. Shlain's basic argument, his evaluation of various artworks as demonstrating specific scientific findings - it all hinges on metaphor. And metaphor is an exceedingly powerful, non-causal means of connectivity. The roots of metaphor grow out of language, which in turn is likely the root out of which grows our very cognition. Julian Jaynes has argued that consciousness itself is a metaphorical space we have created linguistically. Additionally, many of the scientific findings of the 20th century that pertain to light, physics and the nature of reality are only comprehensible to our three-dimensional minds via metaphor. There seems to be something more accurate about the correspondences in metaphorical relationships than about the causal relationships between events that we purport to live by. As Hayden White has observed, causality is a construction imposed on events through our human need to narrativize - causality and narrative do not inhere in events themselves, and only seem to do so when we are bounded by the third dimension and cannot perceive time as a unity. The short of the long is that Shlain probably made a few mistakes here and there that an artist writing about art, a physicist writing about physics, and a historian writing about the history of either, would not have made. But neither would the artist, the physicist or the historian likely have blended these seemingly disjointed disciplines into one comprehensive vision of the reality in which we find ourselves.