The concept of the renaissance character, a myriad blend of logic and esthetic prowess, made accessible to young engineers and artists alike. Light in tone, an essay for all who are curious, gifted or in discovery mode...

1. There is an art to science, and science in art; the two are not enemies, but different
aspects of the whole. — Isaac Asimov, author and biochemist1
Towards becoming a polymath: prospering through
Introduction
Like any simplistic argument, continuing the worn-out debate which suggests that art and science are
contradictory negates what the poet Whitworth called the “largeness” of character, or what I prefer to think
of as the mosaic of human capacity. Naturally, we all have our inclinations and our preferences, but I will
suggest here that complementarity for engineers and dancers alike is much more viable than an insistence
on polarity. A neighbor of my best friends in New Hampshire had been short-listed for the Nobel prize in
physics, taught at MIT, but was appreciated mostly for giving piano lessons to the local children. Einstein
loved to ride a bike and play his violin.
Any painter can tell you about perspective, but is also likely to have a wide range of material science
techniques, a good grasp of chemistry, light, color separation and pointillist theories, an arcane
understanding of gravity and physics, a range of drafting techniques, at least a basic understanding of
carpentry, surface tension, spatial awareness, and a focus for minutiae which compares favorably to an
engineer in a nanotechnology lab. An engineer with no sense of perspective would be hard put to go beyond
the concept stage of even the most simplistic of devices—but of course, if he’s math adverse or refuses to
look at alternative solutions (the opposite of a failure analysis orientation) she would also likely be doomed
to not actually building anything, nor even be able to achieve a PhD.
Many years ago, I met a curator at the Burke Museum on the University of Washington campus while I was
doing a gorilla art project (wrapping some fossilized trees and doing an oil rubbing of their forms on a cotton
sheet). First, he told me, sotto voce, that they were pines, not oaks, in spite of the explanatory sign saying
otherwise, and that I should also be a bit skeptical of categories and labels in general—prophetic advice, and
appropriate to this present exercise in exploring what to me are concurrent aspects of a balanced, thinking
individual.
1
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 251.
amix ofart and science
By, Stephen Fischer, Career Development Specialist

2. P a g e | 2
Wesley went on to introduce himself, saying he had just started his third career, after having converted from
business into a successful life as a miniature painter and engraver, then transformed into self-taught paleo-
botanist: he had intuited where Neolithic forests might have been in the Columbia Basin and then found the
oldest extant seeds from a long defunct wild apple by striking out with a rock hammer, compass, sleeping
bag, and a one-way ticket on a Greyhound bus. After publishing his findings, he was named honorary
professor at the university, and eventually, head of the fossil plants section of the museum. He would
eventually go back to producing his incredibly detailed miniature landscapes to great acclaim in New York
and Tokyo. Many years later, another Seattleite would give up his day job of running the world’s largest
software concern to work on mother-child and HIV health issues around the world, setting the scene for
Virgin and many other corporations, as well as governments, to follow the lead of the Gates Foundation.
You don’t have to be Einstein or Mozart to understand the implicit links between rationality and creativity,
or the complementarity of logic and intuition. In fact, rather than looking at the negative binomial of “art
versus science,” we should investigate the potential for cross-pollination in each of us that our left and right
hemispheres bring to bear: after all, they do form a whole, which over thousands of years, has learned to
thrive for most of us, though it needs help from its host to do so.
Further, as Einstein and Galileo both demonstrated,
creativity can enhance scientific thinking in important
ways—the ability to use metaphor, for example, or the role
of imagination. “These are outcomes that are useful,” says
Elliot Eisner, emeritus professor from Stanford University,
“not only in the arts, but in business and other activities
where good thinking is employed.”
So, while Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo are often
cited as prime examples of “Renaissance men” or
polymaths, in fact, most of us are able to tap into both
hemispheres of the brain as we approach any problem in
life, whether typically seen as creative (a new combination
of saffron and pepper vodka for wild salmon, say, or a
freehand drawing of an electric mandolin) or technical
(seeking a new type of alloy for a micro-sensor or bringing
down the temperature range for operating a laser), we
need both our logic and our intuition. Galileo was the first to attempt to render a realistic (not religious)
image of the moon, and made full use of his training in chiaroscuro, but if his sense of physics and his technical
facility at lens grinding had not matched, we would have waited even longer to understand that if indeed the
moon was made of Swiss cheese, it was more Emmenthal than Gruyeres, and the “man” there was less
Martian than we suspected (think of Matt Damon vs R2D2).
Let’s explore a few ability blends and consider some prototypical figures from history before turning to some
contemporary examples of an unrestrained synthetically immersed celebration of life.
The mosaic of being human
Charlemagne (c. 742–814 A.D.), King of the Franks, claimed that “to have another language is to possess a
second soul.” More prosaically, psycholinguistic research suggests that bilingual people have a talent for
math, and vice versa, and that people with strong abstract reasoning capacity are likely to learn new human
(or programming) languages more readily than monolinguals.
While I won’t make any psychic claims, long-term studies do seem to indicate that advantages which
multilinguals exhibit over monolinguals are not restricted to the linguistic domain: in fact, substantial long-
The worst scientist is he who is
not an artist; the worst artist is
he who is no scientist. In early
times, medicine was an art,
which took its place at the side
of poetry and painting; to-day,
they try to make a science of it,
placing it beside mathematics,
astronomy, and physics.—
Armand Trousseau,
French neurologist1

3. P a g e | 3
lived cognitive, social, personal, academic, and professional benefits of enrichment from bilingual contexts
have been well documented (Thomas & Collier 19982
, amongst others). Some of you may remember that
Latin used to be taught as a classical language on its own merits, but also as an academic domain with the
aim of cognitive training. In high school, we had to memorize cases on flashcards which disappeared from
short-term memory almost as fast as they went in, but which did seem to help us to acquire more Spanish
vocabulary and be able to conjugate verbs more readily, too.
As opposed to monoglots, those fluent in two or more languages seem to have a greater propensity for
alternate explanations (i.e. abstract reasoning and an investigative vs. a reductionist mindset) and that
studying or playing music may enhance learning certain fundamentals of geometry or physics. Five decades
of research shows that due to the continual mental gymnastics of moving between language systems,
bilinguals are known to have enhanced capacity for creativity, mathematics, abstract reasoning and an
especially acute ear for music, too.
I don’t have to look further than my immediate family to find examples of this—my three multilingual
daughters, one of whom is an entrepreneur and zany cocktail inventor, another a human rights activist and
events producer, and the third who does art-therapy, dance, poetry, and film, also excels in both math and
physics. This is probably familiar ground for most of you reading this: being a polyglot is in fact a great basis
for being a polymath, or someone who has fostered complementary aspects of intellect, character and spirit,
enforcing the blend of artistic and scientific skills which many agree define talent and genius.
According to a recent book by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, an authorial biochemist-historian team
who have identified the thinking strategies of some of history's greatest creative minds, from Albert Einstein
and Jane Goodall to Amadeus Mozart and Virginia Woolf, creativity is not only born, it can also be cultivated.
This was echoed in a recent exchange with one of my brothers, a self-taught software programmer and fraud
expert, mandolin player, athlete and Native American craft worker who says about Mozart’s love of
mathematics, “I have my own philosoph[y]: simple, just that what we perceive as a renaissance way of
thinking is just a discovery that art and science are symbiotic.”
With more than ten years of ferreting out the strands of creative genius, the Root-Bernsteins have identified
a common set of thinking tools at the heart of creative understanding that need to be mastered by any would-
be genius: observing, imaging, abstracting, recognizing and forming patterns, analogizing, body thinking,
empathizing, multi-dimensional thinking, modeling, playing, transforming, and synthesizing. If this seems
remarkably like the list of cognitive patterns a successful researcher or architect employs, too, for me there’s
no surprise.
Citing research conducted on metacognition in their book entitled, Sparks of Genius,3
they arrive at the
conclusion that all the imagination needs to be prolific is exercise. "Creative thinking in all fields occurs
preverbally, before logic and linguistics comes into play, manifesting itself through emotions, intuitions,
images, and bodily feelings," they write, having studied some of the world's most advanced thinkers in the
arts and sciences.4
"Fantasy and imagination suggest how the world might be,” write the Root-Bernsteins, “knowledge and
experience limit the possibilities; melding the two begets understanding. Without the illusions of the mind,
a clear grasp of reality is impossible, and vice versa.” They argue convincingly that anyone with the right mix
of inspiration and drive can set their own genius in motion.
2
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200310_thomas.pdf
3
Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People, by, Robert S. Root-Bernstein &
Michele M. Root-Bernstein; Mariner Books; 2001
4
Amazon Books review: A brilliant examination of "the whole point of gourmet thinking and education" By, Robert
Morris, April 10, 2013

4. P a g e | 4
Another worthwhile angle for understanding the complexity of human beings stems from the work of
Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner who developed the theory of multiple intelligences based on cognitive
research, eventually identifying eight distinct intelligences. He claims that, "we are all able to know the world
through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body
to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of
ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences…and in the ways in which such
intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in
various domains." (from Gardner, 1999) 5
According to the theory, we all have a mix of abilities across these distinct but complementary areas (except
in the case of congenital or induced brain damage), yet this does not guarantee facility or prowess in one or
more. This seems to echo what we have just considered above—there is no substitute for mental exercise
when it comes to helping our minds flourish. Further research has strongly underlined the roles of context
and culture in the realization of these entwined capacities, suggesting that if Bobby Fischer (World Chess
Champion in the 1970’s) lived in a culture without chess, that potential would never have been manifested.
Intelligence, then, stems from the interplay of biological proclivities and opportunities for actualizing abilities
in a particular cultural context.
Dee Dickinson of John Hopkins University, writing about Gardner, says that, “The human being is also more
than his or her intellectual powers. Perhaps more crucial than intelligence in the human firmament are
motivation, personality, emotions, and will. If we are ever to obtain a comprehensive and fully integrated
picture of human beings, we need to meld our insights about cognition with comparable insights in respect
to these other aspects of the human being. Perhaps, indeed, a different view of human nature will result
from this activity of synthesis.”6
More similitude to the findings about creative geniuses, it seems.
Mystical mathematics
Galileo was one of the first “scientific philosophers” to state that the laws of nature are mathematical. In The
Assayer he wrote "Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe ... It is written in the language of
mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures...." Other astronomers
would nod wisely, but Mozart and Escher exemplify a host of creative thinkers who would also agree.
Jerry King, a mathematics professor and a poet, wrote The Art of Mathematics which his reviewers claim
“razes the barriers between a world of two cultures and hands us the tools for appreciating the art and
treasures of this elegant discipline,” providing an original framework for contemplating mathematics as art
by comparing the beauty of a famous painting with that of an elegant proof.7
Musical and mathematical prowess have also long been linked, though experts disagree on how, and which
is the proverbial cart, which the horse. The connection between music and math/science has been around
since ancient Greek times, when the mathematician Pythagoras, working in the fifth century B.C. argued that
music was intricately connected to mathematics and science (Weiss & Taruskin, 2008). He has been credited
with developing our understanding of the harmonic (overtone) series including the fact that subdividing a
string by a whole number produces a harmonious scale, evidence of mathematics long related to music and
physical science (Godwin, 1986). Pythagoras devised a musical tuning system based on mathematical
harmonics in frequency ratios of whole number intervals.
5
https://howardgardner01.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/443-davis-christodoulou-seider-mi-article.pdf
6
http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/future/creating_the_future/crfut_gardner.cfm
7
https://smile.amazon.com/Art-Mathematics-Dover-
Books/dp/0486450201/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_g2609328962?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries
%2A=0&ie=UTF8

5. P a g e | 5
Borrowing from an essay called A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy in 1940, Dr. King states that "the
keys to mathematics are beauty and elegance and not dullness and technicality,” and that beauty is the
motivating force for mathematical research. Paul Erdős, the Hungarian mathematician, agrees but considers
explanation irrelevant: "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is
beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful.”8
Another mathematician-musician, Patrick Hunt, also wrote about this symbiosis, noting that It has long been
believed that Mozart may have used the Fibonacci Sequence in his Piano Sonata #1 in C major K279, and
elements of the Golden Section (x, 1-x) in balancing his musical lines with the ratio of theme to development
or musical exposition to recapitulation. He cites his sister Nannerl having observed that Mozart liked
“playing” with numbers and even scribbled mathematical equations for probabilities in the margins of some
compositions (e.g. Fantasia and Fugue in C Major, K394).
Mario Livio, author and astrophysicist, also highlights the mathematical symmetry of Mozart’s music and the
absolute intellectuality of his music, especially in pieces such as his Musical Dice Game Minuet of 16 measures
with the choice of one of eleven possible variations from a random selection, each possibility selected by a
roll of two dice, with trillions of possible mirror combinations. Similarly, Mozart also reveled in creating
musical themes from observing the trajectories of a billiard ball and was adept at writing musical palindromes
and puns. Livio concludes that one of the reasons his fans adore Mozart is for the playful brilliance of his
musical inventiveness that balances “predictability versus surprise.” Ultimately, Mozart would probably
agree with his sentiment that music is “mathematics you can hear.”
Galileo’s father Vincenzo, a lutenist and music theorist, wrote a treatise on string theory (pitch and string
tension). He had performed experiments establishing perhaps the oldest known non-linear relation in
physics: for a stretched string, the pitch varies as the square root of the tension. 9
Moreover, 17th
-century
German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (as cited in Archibald, 1923) also stated that “music is a hidden
exercise in arithmetic, of a mind unconscious of dealing with numbers.”
Virtuoso violist Raphael Hillyer, one of the founders of the renowned Juilliard Quartet in the mid-1940’s, had
a degree in mathematics and was also the son of a mathematician. Max Born, physicist and Nobel Laureate
in 1954 for his work on statistical interpretation of the wave function in quantum mechanics, loved to play
Bach daily on the piano. Leonhard Euler (1707-83), a Swiss mathematician and physicist who kept journals
full of notes on musical problems and formulated a theory of musical consonance, regularly invited
composers to his home to perform.10
Is this perhaps why the chewy Basler Läkerli cookies are so delicious?
Moving towards mathematics that you can see, the precepts of tessellation, (a technique employed by
Moorish designers for the Alhambra and many other early Islamic masterpieces in Spain) inspired M. C.
Escher (1898—1972), the otherworldly but highly accomplished illustrator and engraver, who is cited as
saying, “I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.” Looking at his work, his daydreams seemed
to veer between the mystical and the mathematical, too.
8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_and_art
9
http://www.electrummagazine.com/2013/06/mozart-and-mathematics/
10
Music Makes You Smarter: A New Paradigm for Music Education? John L. Vitale, Canadian Journal of Education /
Vol. 34, No. 3 (2011), pp. 317-343

6. P a g e | 6
His fascination with five specific polyhedra, which appear many times in his work, and his subsequent bending
of space and perspective, were inspired by discussions with prominent mathematicians and provided him
with a lifetime's worth of materials for his woodcuts.
Many of his works contain impossible constructions, made using ordinary Euclidean and hyperbolic
geometry, for artistic effect. He used tetrahedrons, cubes, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, and icosahedrons
prominently in Order and Chaos and Four Regular Solids, often placing these stellated figures within other
figures, thus further distorting the viewing angle and setting up a contradiction between perspective
projection and three dimensions, as Picasso and other Cubists would also attempt to do in different media.
Although teasing the viewer, Escher’s constructions are particularly pleasing to the human eye. Based on the
"impossible staircase" conceived by the medical scientist Lionel Penrose and his son, Roger, a mathematician,
his Ascending and Descending is one of the best known examples of these. 11
Science and beauty
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower…”
--William Blake, Auguries of Innocence (ll. 1–2)
Whether when suddenly understanding Fermat’s Last Theorem or swimming with parrot fish and marine
turtles off the reefs of Australia, seeing a comet streak towards the horizon, or the Northern Lights while
hiking in the Olympic mountains, we all have experiences to treasure which involved moments of
observation, feeling and insight. Poets and visual artists, but also engineers and Disney designers, may seek
inspiration for their oeuvres and apply their sensibilities towards expressing these catalytic experiences.
In fact science and art constitute a spectrum, wrote historian Richard Hamblyn, not a dichotomy, as shown
by figures such as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who famously described the lurid sunsets resulting from
the great Krakatoa volcanic explosion in 1883, in a way which is both scientifically precise and charged with
aesthetic feeling: "Above the green in turn appeared a red glow, broader and burlier in make; it was softly
brindled …" Best of all, his account appeared in the world's leading science journal, Nature, which no longer
publishes original observations by poets.12
“Art interprets the visible world,” wrote Leonard Shlain , a pioneer of laparoscopic surgery turned philosophe,
“and physics charts its invisible mechanisms. While at first glance these two realms seem completely
11
Stewart Coffin makes polyhedral puzzles in rare and beautiful woods; George W. Hart works on the theory of
polyhedra and sculpts objects inspired by them; Magnus Wenninger makes "especially beautiful" models of complex
stellated polyhedra.[134]
12
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/28/art-of-science-hamblyn-review

7. P a g e | 7
opposed, consider that both strive to reveal truths for which there are no words––with physicists using the
language of mathematics and artists using creative expression.” Intuitively, many would agree they seem to
meet in the areas of bilingualism and the conjuncture between math and music, but in fact there are meeting
points between health and engineering, technology and social change, and many other areas of life.
Scientists and artists both explore new concepts, techniques and materials. What links them is their curiosity
and interest in helping us to understand and interpret lessons from the natural world.
Rosie Sanders, a UK photographer, believes that “…acquired knowledge helps us to appreciate the beauty of
things,” since from childhood the average person "is fascinated by things in nature and how they work and
evolve, are born and die and reproduce." Anita Nowinska, a painter, adds, "What artists and scientists have
in common is the ability to see what most people don't." Using this ability, "Scientists document and explore;
artists capture and immortalize. " A well-illustrated idea can make a difficult scientific concept accessible,
says Nowinska. "Look at Darwin. He saw the tiny details and differences in creatures, and documented them
through beautiful artistic renditions." 13
In Leonardo da Vinci’s time, technologist and entrepreneur John Maeda wrote, art and science had not yet
matured to the polarized state in which they exist today and coexisted naturally. “Of course, science’s level
of sophistication back then was quite different. [I]t is clear to me that even current practices in scientific
research have much to gain by involving artists in the process early and often. Artists serve as great partners
in the communication of scientific research; moreover, they can serve as great partners in the navigation of
the scientific unknown.”14
Two Nobel laureates, one a physicist and one a poet, illustrate this beautifully: Richard Feynman learned to
draw in order to express the beauty he observed, whether in the petal or the cell of a flower, while Pablo
Neruda incorporated many astronomical observations in his love songs and cantos. Feynman, the 1965 Nobel
prize winner in quantum physics, said, “I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to
myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.” 15
He shared an anecdote about a friend who complained, "A scientist takes [a flower] all apart and it becomes
a dull thing. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees…the cells in there, the
complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. All kinds of interesting questions which the science
knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower… I don't understand how it
subtracts.”
"I have always loved the minutiae of things,” says Rosie Sanders, an artist whose work is influenced by macro
photography, with a particular focus on flowers, who agrees with Feynman. Rob Kesseler, a professor at the
University of the Arts, London, believes an artist can "engage [scientists] in discussions and cause them to
reflect on their visual awareness of the material they were working with" and gain insight into "the world
outside the lab,” whether on materials science, physics or biomedical science.16
For artists and scientists
alike, "All that acquired knowledge helps us to appreciate the beauty of things," he observes.
What processes of re-construction and insight go on in the mind of the observer or the audience they attempt
to share perceptions with to allow this to be achieved is a question that has long concerned poets as well.
Currently, cognitive scientists are investigating these processes formally, in concert with haiku writers in one
13
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/22454785
14
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/artists-and-scientists-more-alike-than-different/
15
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/richardpf718984.html
16
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/22454785

8. P a g e | 8
recent study. While it is still a mystery exactly what happens in the brain when people read literary texts,
studying the processing of literary language, and in particular, poetry, has been recognized as “well suited to
compactly demonstrate the complexities with which our brains construct the world in and around us,” since
it facilitates bringing processes of thought via language and images (cognition) together with those of the
senses (pleasure and emotion, e.g.).
Accordingly, cognitive scientists and writers have been collaborating in laying the groundwork for the field of
neuro-cognitive poetics, which aims at understanding the mental ‘processing’ of literary texts including
poetry (reception, comprehension, appreciation, emotional response), using the concepts and
methodological approaches of neuro-cognitive psychology.17
While this is a fascinating area of investigation,
it also seems to be the appropriate “bookend” to Feynman’s belief about scientific observation; here, one
hopes that the wonder of insight and the playfulness of language which good poetry embody will not suffer
from tinkering with the mechanics of mental associations.18
Michael West, Director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory, noted that astronomical imagery often figured in
the work of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel-prize winning Chilean poet (1904-1973).19
One of his poems begins:
“Every day you play with the light of the universe,” while another poem entitled. The Future is Space describes
“black space with room for many dreams,” In La Poesia he described the experience of discovering poetry
as a youth, comparing it to the beauty of the universe. Neruda’s homeland of Chile, already home to many
of the world’s greatest telescopes, will host the European Southern Observatory Extremely Large Telescope
(ELT) expected to be completed in 2024 and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the following year. 20
One
can only imagine the Odas Spatiales which he might have penned, had Neruda lived to see these.
17
Ferstl, 2010; Mar, 2011; Jacobs, 2015, p. 2
18
Müller, H. J., Geyer, T., Günther, F., Kacian, J., Pierides, S.(2017). Reading English-language haiku: Processes of
meaning construction revealed by eye movements. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 10(1):4, 1-33. February 2017
19
The Maria Mitchell Observatory, founded in 1908 in Nantucket, Massachusetts, was named for the first American
woman to work as a professional astronomer.
20
http://earthsky.org/space/poet-pablo-neruda-and-the-beauty-of-the-universe September 23, 1973 was the day
Pablo Neruda, died.

9. P a g e | 9
Another less well-known poet and literary critic, Edward Nudelman, is
a cancer researcher who trained as a chemist and zoologist and who
combines art and science seamlessly in his poems. 21
Author of two
poetry books, his latest collection was runner-up for a book-of-the-year
award in the US. Using math concepts, scientific analysis and imagery
from nature, Nudelman explores the borders between the known and
the unknown, through a series of images and by posing both logical and
philosophical questions.
Nudelman’s observation skills as a scientist allow him to seize on
intricacies of nature, of everyday objects, and approaching these as if
in need of testing a Socratic principle, he challenges our perceptions
and therefore our existential relationship to our environment. Perhaps
he feels kinship with both Feynman and Neruda, balancing like a
tightrope performer between levels of ordinary and imagined
realities. 22
Digital humanities, recently arrived at EPFL and featured at the new
ArtLab on campus, is a recent attempt at formalizing an area of
scholarly activity at the intersection of digital technologies and the
humanities. While in its infancy, critics may have seen it as a fancified
term for a new means of custodianship (copying, archiving, and in many
cases, making available rare manuscripts or paintings to the general
public for the first time), it has since evolved into a proper discipline on
its own merits. In fact, its basic premise is that the printed word is no
longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.
It comprises new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative,
transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and
publishing, while at the same time studying and critiquing how these
impact cultural heritage and digital culture. Like moon travel, this may
soon seem the norm rather than the exception, and already many
MOOC’s and even some traditional courses discourage printed support
material, and art galleries now exist in which the work shown may be
downloaded, printed and framed, but whose originals are entirely
digital in existence.
Artists and scientists have proven the power of collaboration in the
decades of advancement in computer graphics presented annually at
SIGGRAPH, amongst other professional conferences. Since its
beginning in 1974 by a small group of specialists in a previously
unknown discipline, SIGGRAPH has since evolved into an international
community of researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists,
and business professionals who share an interest in computer graphics
and interactive techniques.
21
What Looks Like an Elephant by Edward Nudelman, published by Lummox Press, was the 2011 Indie Lit Awards
Poetry Runner-Up.
22
http://savvyverseandwit.com/2012/04/2011-indie-lit-awards-poetry-runner-up-review-what-looks-like-an-
elephant-by-edward-nudelman.html
Avogadro's number, sand
and stars, buttons
on the universe's dark coat.
Pi's repeating infinitum
crafting a new language
based on a circle argument.
Planck and Einstein, big C
and little h, humongous
constants standing singularly
over all the others.
Schrodinger's deep equation
with Hamiltonian operator
making good practice for P-
Chem majors at exam time.
And the Googol, a
duotrigintillion, ten thousand
sexdecillion
on the long scale, or ten
sexdecilliard on the Peletier
scale.
At night I close my eyes and
the numbers dissolve.
I see angel hairs splitting the
wind and seraphim radiant
with joy moving the sun
across the sky. I see
unnumbered
rays from portents of
darkness and ominous rims.
Edward Nudelman,
Cancer Researcher/Poet
FAMOUS NUMBERS
AND THEN THERE'S ME

10. P a g e | 10
American computer scientist Donald Ervin Knuth, observed, “We have seen that computer programming is
an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and
especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an
artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better. Therefore we can be glad that people who lecture at
computer conferences speak of the state of the Art.”23
As I am writing this, Johann Schneider-Ammann, head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs,
Education and Research (EAER) which deals with matters relating to economic affairs, research and
education, has announced his intention to fund 25 new chairs in digitally-related research, about half of
which will be based at EPFL, with a view for better incorporating IT tools, techniques and skills in education
for enhancing future employment. Having a strong basis of synthetic approaches between technology and
culture, as in digital humanities, should provide a touchstone to remind us not to fixate on AI and robots, nor
only on educating Homo economicus and Homo technologicus but also Homo aestheticus and Homo
humanus.24
Intuitive innovation
According to both Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, Galileo was the father of modern science, yet as a
young man, he considered becoming a painter, and today is remembered for a mere fraction of what
captivated him and therefore what he produced. German art historian, Horst Bredekamp, details how Galileo
traced sunspots in his precise drawings, which he executed with a level of skill needed by both architects and
painters, and which led many of both to call upon him for advice or critical insight.
Bredekamp contends that Galileo's mastery of the modulation of light and shadow made drawing an
instrument of scientific learning as well as a method of documentation. 25
Galileo followed Thomas Harriot
in making lunar observations, but as he managed to build better telescopes, and therefore saw more, and
unlike Harriot he also made careful drawings, many in chiaroscuro, delineating the features of the Moon's
landscape, such as mountains and craters.
Having acquired extensive knowledge of perspective from Ostilio Ricci, the court mathematician in Florence,
Galileo was also a close friend of the painter Lodovico Cigoli and became known as an art critic, advising many
of the leading Tuscan painters. When Galileo suddenly turned to astronomy at the not-so-tender age of 45,
his trained eye and drawing techniques proved extremely useful, and his sketches convinced people that the
Moon was not a perfectly smooth sphere. Bredekamp states that the act of seeing is itself a powerful
analytical tool, a fact amply demonstrated by the work of Feynman, Neruda, Picasso and Darwin, amongst a
multitude of others.26
In addition to his astronomical observations, including the discovery of the four large moons of Jupiter, he
made original contributions to the science of motion through an innovative combination of experiment and
mathematics. Because of the controversies attached to his observations about the earth’s orbits, his
reputation as an inventor is less well known. Galileo was an ardent innovator and precision craftsman, taking
rudimentary designs and transforming them in order to create state-of-the-art telescopes, a geometric and
military compass suitable for use by gunners and surveyors, and a thermometer, which he made using the
23
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth
24
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_the_human_species
25
In Galilei der Künstler (Galileo the Artist) Galilei der Künstler. Die Zeichnung, der Mond, die Sonne , Akademie-
Verlag: 2007. 525 pp.
26
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7185/full/452289b.html

11. P a g e | 11
expansion and contraction of air in a bulb to move water in an attached tube.27
Finally, Galileo made a
number of contributions to what is now known as engineering, as distinct from pure physics.
Adapting existing technologies to new needs combines technical prowess with creative insight, not to
mention a sense of derring-do. It’s not a surprise, then, that Benjamin Franklin, polymath and one of the
“Founding Fathers” of the United States, wore so many hats it’s hard to keep track: a respected diplomat and
electrifying kite-flyer, he was also an accomplished author, musician, playboy, postmaster and spy. A noted
scientist, his experiments with electricity contributed importantly to the field of physics. As an inventor, he
patented dozens of new tools and devices, many of which have been preserved in the library of his home in
Philadelphia (now a museum in his name), including a clever gadget which could be extended to take a book
off an upper shelf in his library. Hence his oft-quoted quip that “laziness is the mother of invention.” He is
also remembered for more universal items like the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove.
Active in civil society, too, he was instrumental in the establishment of Philadelphia's fire department and
the University of Pennsylvania, now an Ivy League institution. Talk about a true mosaic…
Alexander Graham Bell was a pianist whose invention of the telephone began with a simple musical game.
He studied the human voice, invented a wide range of devices for transferring sound but also had a strong
interest in other scientific fields, including medical research, alternative fuel sources, experimenting with
metal detectors, developing hydrofoil watercraft and much more. “The inventor looks upon the world and is
not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world;
he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization," said Bell.28
The same
could be said of the engineer and the artist, of course.
Consider Henri Poincaré, the 19th-century French mathematician credited as the father of topology, but
whose thinking was closer to that of a sculptor or painter than an astronomer or a particles physicists (both
fields he was renowned in). Edouard Toulouse, a psychologist specializing in creativity, interviewed him in
1897 and wrote that Poincaré's way of thinking "was spontaneous, little conscious, more like dreaming than
rational, seemingly most suited to works of pure imagination.” Einstein would have approved of this, even
though apparently not about his interpretation of the laws of physics.
"It is only through science and art that civilization is of value," wrote Poincaré, who achieved the
extraordinary status of becoming simultaneously the Director of l'Académie Française, as well as President
of l'Académie des Sciences, virtually unheard of before or since. He moved readily between two worlds, three
if you count philosophy, for which he was also a respected thinker,
and he played a pivotal role in sparking the explosion of creativity in
both art and science that set the tenor of the 20th century.
On the 100th
anniversary of Poincaré’s death, Arthur Miller wrote in
a Guardian article about his influences on both Einstein, whom he
met and disagreed with about relativity, and on Picasso, whom he
influenced only indirectly. Both geniuses were inspired by Poincaré’s
best-selling Science and Hypothesis, published in 1902.
The artist found Poincaré’s concepts about geometry and moving
into a fourth dimension compelling, and these led to his
revolutionary re-interpretations of primitive Iberian cave paintings
27
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7185/pdf/452289b.pdf?origin=ppub
28
http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/scientists/alexandergrahambell.html
“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”
--Pablo Picasso

12. P a g e | 12
and would later form the basis of much of Cubist art.29
In 1905 Poincaré worked out the mathematical
method for exploring how electrons move at velocities close to that of light, work which set the basis for
Einstein's relativity theory in four-dimensional space-time.30
Poincaré is also credited with establishing chaos
theory and the mathematical methods he developed for studying elementary particles (and which led to the
invention of topology) are still in use today.
Science and medicine
Collaboration between engineers and health professionals is not new; what we think of as life sciences began
in the late 1960’s as joint initiatives between medical doctors and a range of technically trained specialists,
laying the groundwork for bio-medicine (and later, “medtech”). Similarly the roots of AI and machine learning
may be traced to simultaneous collaborative efforts at the time between psychologists and engineers in what
was known then as the “man-machine” movement.
Ongoing efforts supported by the CERN community in more recent times have facilitated exchanges in such
traditionally disparate fields as particle physics and clinical practice research and methodology for new cancer
diagnoses and treatments. Topics range from the production of more effective isotopes for clinical use to
personalized medicine in imagery, drug selection and treatment planning; from drug-radiation interactions
to immunotherapies; and from advances in detection techniques to hadron therapy. The potential for
creative breakthroughs in both prevention and treatment, as well as more comprehensive research, is
exponential, and hopefully will also have a positive impact on changing the traditional “silo culture” of many
specializations.
Radiochemists, nuclear-medicine physicians, biologists, software developers, accelerator experts,
oncologists, and detector and medical radio-physicists meet annually to work together to “think outside the
box” and make innovative proposals to boost further the comprehensive approach of cancer management.31
This has led to important breakthroughs in physics for health applications ranging from new detectors and
next-generation imaging techniques, to accelerator-based facilities for making new isotopes such as
radiotracers and drugs. A number of relevant technologies have been developed at CERN, including the
design of specialized accelerators for cancer therapy, the adaptation of the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) to
serve as a biomedical facility, radio-isotope production using ISOLDE, medical imaging and applications to
improve dosimetry for patients and, finally, large scale computing applications.
Further, the ENLIGHT network was established in 2002 to coordinate European efforts in hadron therapy,
and its major accomplishment is that 300 participants across 20 European countries from traditionally
disparate communities (clinicians, physicists, biologists and engineers with experience in particle therapy)
are now all working together.32
With the increasing complexity of ensuring not only treatment of illness but
well-being for populations deemed to stay longer on the planet, facilitating the focus of a multiplicity of bright
minds here is promising news indeed.
Appropriate technology solutions
“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinion or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns
of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter
technology with impunity, just because [s]he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception,” wrote
Marshall McLuhan, a marketing guru who had dropped out of an engineering program before studying
29
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/jul/17/henri-poincare-einstein-picasso
30
i.e. three spatial dimensions and the fourth dimension of time
31
A series of annual International Conferences on Translational Research in Radio-Oncology and Physics for Health
32
http://enlight.web.cern.ch/

13. P a g e | 13
logic.33
At this point, I hope you’ll agree that this is far too categorical, since of course scientists and engineers
do not live in a separate society from artists, in spite of personal and professional niches. There are plenty of
examples, too, of how all of us can be duped or manipulated by technology, the advertising swarm which
promotes it, and the lifestyle which we have been seduced into creating around our ever more sophisticated
gadgets. A recent talk in the SwissTech Center by a programmer from Adobe illustrated how the most banal
of I-phone images could be converted via an application into a pseudo-Van Gogh or recast in terms of lighting
or angle to morph into something completely other than its original form.
As part of the larger movement of digital humanities, this is great stuff for photographers and visual artists,
and probably useful in some types of research and documentation, too. Still, in the wrong hands, an easy
way to distort both representation and the storytelling this implies. It’s all a far cry from the Polaroid pictures
which cost as much as a cup of coffee and would prove to be worthless more times than not, so as kids we
would have to burn a whole packet of negatives to get one or two interesting photos of a friend, to the point
that one hesitated even trying—unimaginable for the Facebook generation, of course.
Innovation is the other side of the coin we call creativity, and is one of the main reasons why employers are
so keen on employing EPFL graduates. Your generation also focuses on personal values and social impact to
a degree which does honor to the predecessors of Renaissance blending of these worlds. Finding appropriate
solutions to social, economic and technological challenges is an endeavor shared by engineers and artists as
well as civil society, often leading or even outstripping governmental efforts.
Back to our I-gadgets: unlikely as it might seem at first glance, given its track record in technological
development, Africa is at the center of a mobile revolution. While mobile phones in North America and
Europe continue to evolve into mini-PC’s (or –Macs), in Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the
world's electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led both users and
developers to become ever more resourceful, and mobile telephones are being used instead to do things
that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on.
Africa offers itself up as worthy of study for creative solutions to complex problems which have stymied
governments, the UN and NGO’s for decades: how to ensure reliable communication, whether relating to
policy, emergency alerts or health services? How to safeguard subsidies, deploy development funds and
guarantee that seeds, electricity, water and transport reach rural communities without reliable infrastructure
in many cases and while circumventing the often corrupt middlemen? Strange as it may seem, the answers
which have evolved, slowly but surely, to meet each of these challenges are facilitated by cell-phone-based
solutions. While of course still unavailable to many, they can be shared, require less investment and
maintenance than computers, and are of course much more autonomous and portable.
We visited a small farming village in eastern Tanzania whose traditions centered upon communal effort and
shared resources; each new house was built by as many able hands who were available at the time of
construction, and a new irrigation system comprised almost entirely of standard garden hoses had been
painstakingly installed across kilometers of crop fields, where the villagers raised bananas, cucumbers and
organic strawberries for export. So it was only natural for them to acquire a half dozen phones for shared
use and a portable solar charger which was smaller than an average laptop screen. They, like millions of
others of Africans, can now benefit from direct government subsidies, micro-finance, and the ability to order
their most essential needs directly from suppliers.
33
Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, MIT Press, 1994

14. P a g e | 14
A few years ago in Kenya, the mobile network Safaricom introduced a service called M-Pesa which allows
users to store money on their mobiles. They can pay utilities bills directly, receive or transfer money and
much more. Payments are dispatched by text and the recipient converts it into cash at any M-Pesa office.
Newer micro-financing initiatives also make payments directly to cell phones via SMS-aggregating software,
which taps into the GSM wireless telephone network to enable users to exchange text messages, allowing
for strict accounting, secure management of data and curtailing virtually all corruption.
Mobile-based finance is easy to use and, for millions of Africans unable to access a bank account or afford
the related fees, revolutionary. In fact, with rapid and steady increases in the number of users, even the large
banks which once tried to shut them down have realized the potential of connecting to these low-tech
financial networks, and an estimated one trillion USD is being handled this way each year. According to a
London Business School study in 2005, the economic impacts are impressive: for every additional 10 mobile
phones per 100 people in a developing country, GDP rises by 0.5%.
In addition, mobile phones provide access to emergency warning systems in time of storm or flood, and also
to nurses and doctors who can dispense initial diagnostic and treatment advice, while then helping organize
treatment or medication for the patients, including transport to the nearest facility when appropriate.
Instead of patients having to walk for three days to reach a clinic run by Médecins sans frontiers, say, a Swiss
NGO has launched a telemedicine app which allows medical experts to reach rural populations in Burkina
Faso via smartphones, a minor miracle. One US entrepreneur went so far as to call Africa the “Silicon Valley
of [mobile solutions],” inferring that their pioneering efforts would eventually be emulated worldwide.
All of this recent development results from combining both creative problem-solving and technical capacity,
the “win-win” combination which also built the world heritage Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco (Joseph
Strauss, Chief Engineer, was also a poet) the breath-taking and audacious Burj Khalifa in Dubai, but equally
to the idea of using cotton saris to filter water to inhibit cholera, or the creation of the “fog catcher” nets in
Chile which allow miniscule amounts of rain to be caught in quantities sufficient to supply whole villages (a
nice metaphor for micro-finance, in fact).
To give one example of how this mix of art and science applies to employability, today’s data scientist needs
to master a number of different tools like Cloudera or MapR, of course, but also has to be able to (almost
literally) see the trees from the forest, trusting an intuitive sense of how to adapt or write the best machine-
learning algorithm to achieve the given tasks. Just as importantly, however, s/he has to have extremely good
team working and communication skills, in particular when assessing needs from a non-scientist or explaining
to a manager the results of the latest analyses. Creative solutions for handling data and creating secure
access, go far beyond the technical training required by the job. So-called “geek speak” was probably always
overrated, but as in any discourse community, this has limited value amongst other techies, and virtually
none when dealing with colleagues in other areas, where the work of a data scientist may be essential, but
very poorly understood.
A modern fairy tale
Jules Verne trained as a lawyer, but was a self-taught geographer and is best remembered for creating the
science fiction genre. Unlike H.G. Wells and others, he actually kept abreast of current inventions and
projected into his stories futuristic inventions. You may know of him indirectly via Tintin’s adventures since
many of Verne’s ideas were borrowed by Hergé some 50 years later. Verne was also an accomplished sailor
who published an authoritative book on the geography of France and its colonies. Fascinated with machines
and inventions in general, many of his most “farfetched” devices, including electric submarines, lunar landing
modules, television and the Taser would become facts after his death.

15. P a g e | 15
His work is also the inspiration for one of the wackiest creative engineering projects of our time, Les Machines
de l’Ile de Nantes. Francois Delaroziere and Pierre Orefice, performance artists and designers, have
assembled a team of engineers and technicians whose Grand Eléphante lumbered right out of a Verne
scenario: a 12-meter mechanical pachyderm which can transport up to 35 people on a rollicking ride around
the retrofitted shipyards called “les nefs.”34
Though I could find no direct reference to this, it seems plausible that Delaroziere and Orefice were also
influenced by the legacy of Jean Tinguely, a Swiss artist who combined a strange sense of humor and
structural engineering principles to create enormous moving sculptures in his mid-1950’s series of machines
that moved, exploded and even produced other works of art. Tinguely not only conceptualized the probable
impacts of the introduction of robots in society, he also questioned the role of the artist, the work of art and
the viewer.
Tinguely's work was part of a rebellious movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s which critiqued the excessive
commercialization of both artwork and artists’ personalities as products, and offered an alternative to the
existing art structure. He regarded his works as "cynical social commentary, in a poetic way." He claimed he
could see mysticism in a motor and beauty in an oil refinery, a sentiment many engineers might echo willingly.
"Playing is art," he said. "So I am playing."35
Or, to paraphrase an old riff, he found a vocation that he loved,
so did not have to work a day in his life.
Le Grand Elephant’s inventors would probably echo this sentiment. One look at their megalithic reinvention
of the abandoned shipyards in Nantes would make even Steven Spielberg jealous: at the crossroads of Jules
Verne’s "invented worlds,” the mechanical universe of Leonardo da Vinci, and of Nantes’ industrial history,
on the site of the former shipyards, some very odd machines have come to populate the Île de Nantes,
including the enormous pachyderm.36
Le Grand Elephant was inspired by Verne's short story about a Sultan who built a time-travelling elephant. It
towers 12 meters in height, cost 2.5 million Euros to build, and is eight meters wide and 21 long, so about
seven times larger than a live elephant (and considerably more expensive). Its exoskeleton is made from 48,4
metric tons of steel and Tulip poplar wood, with realistic leather flaps for ears and it is lubricated with 2,000
34
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20140925-in-france-a-steampunk-park-of-jules-vernes-dreams
35
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE3DC1E3FF932A3575AC0A967958260&pagewanted=print
36
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g187198-d1860780-r395236384-Les_Machines_de_L_ile-
Nantes_Loire_Atlantique_Pays_de_la_Loire.html#

16. P a g e | 16
liters of hydraulic oil. Run by a 450 HP motor, it has a speed of one to three km/h, and is set in motion using
62 cylinders, 46 of which are hydraulic, six pneumatic and 10 gas-powered. While moving, it stamps its feet,
flaps its leathery ears, trumpets vigorously and blows water from its twirling trunk, soaking anyone in its
path. Other bizarre mechanical creatures, including a giant spider, an enormous inchworm which you can
ride, a huge version each of a manta ray and a sea snake, and a giant squid populate the sprawling
wonderland on the banks of the Loire River.37
What a delightful way for art and engineering to team up to make fantasy—not to mention tourism and
urban renewal---happen, and mind-stretching fun for both inventors and participants. Both Verne and
Tinguely would be proud.
“Metamechanics” is the term which describes the kinetic sculpture machines (some of which were self-destructive) of Jean Tinguely,
and may have its origins in the Dada art movement. 38
Art and science for a sustainable future
Given the unconventional nature and scale of the problems we face today—global warming, migration
pressures, unstable economies, demographic imbalances, linked to looming health and environmental crises,
childhood mortality and poverty – there is real value in pursuing scientific questions in tandem with artists
and designers in order to benefit from the best talents in both quantitative and qualitative domains.
The UN in its discussion of their Sustainable Development Goals 2030 suggests that to sustain our current
level of impact, we would need “1.7 Earths,” in lieu of the one-and-only which is available, so it is incumbent
that we break from historic approaches and navigate effectively through an enormous matrix of variables,
and quickly. “Artists and designers are the ones who help bring humanity front and center, make us care, and
create answers that resonate with our values,” says Maeda.39
37
Read more: http://www.traveller.com.au/stranger-than-fiction-7yml#ixzz4brQrIwO9
38
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE3DC1E3FF932A3575AC0A967958260&pagewanted=print
39
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/artists-and-scientists-more-alike-than-different/

17. P a g e | 17
“Potentially the most interesting collaboration is that in which the artist and engineer create together, with
unconstrained choice, guided by the artist’s sensibility and concepts and by the engineer’s knowledge, insight
and mastery of the Technological components and physical laws,” wrote Nilo Lindgren in a 1969 edition of
Spectrum, the newsletter for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It further embodies the kind
of original thinking which prizes the use of appropriate technology for social and humanitarian, as well as
infrastructural and economic, needs. The urban planner or engineer of 1950 would have been much less
likely to envelop such an approach, while today, whether buying a boat to rescue refugees using the stock
returns from your IT firm, starting an NGO which provides new and sustainable sources of clean water, raising
millions of dollars to buy food for refugees online in only a matter of days, or helping to convert Nepalese
tuk-tuks to battery power, it is now an established modus operandi which everyone can contribute to.
According to a contemporary Scientific American blog entry, “artists and scientists tend to approach
problems with a similar open-mindedness and inquisitiveness — they do not fear the unknown, preferring
leaps to incremental steps. They make natural partners. With such complementary thinking, there is great
potential when they collaborate from the offset, resulting in unexpected outcomes that can be exponentially
more valuable than when they work apart.” 40
“ [The] emphasis on science and engineering is valid, but you
still need liberal arts thinkers…,” said Alison Byerly, president of Lafayette College, an elite liberal arts school
in suburban Pennsylvania. She described the debate as a “false dichotomy.”
Dr. Billy Klüver an engineer who worked with a wide range of “creative types” in the 1960’s, from filmmaker
Andy Warhol, composer John Cage, to painter Jasper Johns, amongst others, was well ahead of his time in
perceiving the added value of close collaboration of the fundamental sort. “You do things you wouldn’t
normally do, because you’re in touch with a mind whose vision is totally different from yours. I’m not so
much interested in helping artists as I am in seeing what effect the artist could have on technology.”
“In the future, I see the [artist’s vision and concern] having more and more impact, as he learns more about
technical processes. The contribution of the artist could conceivably lead to an increased awareness, a new
view of the problems the engineer, designer or scientist has to deal with. [They] might reflect on questions
like: what should the next mass media [or megalopolis] look like? I think the main influence of art and
technology together will come in the area of environment.” 41
Shall we strive to be like Galileo, best known for astronomy and Vatican peccadillos but also a musician,
engineer and inventor? Each mosaicist in his or her own way will define the Renaissance polymath of our
times. Whether or not one prefers to regard such deep-going collaborations as the reassertion of an older
tradition or as a genuine “new combine” one must recognize that this art-and-technology movement does
hold the seeds of radical possibilities, not just for the artist but for the engineer as well. This should inspire
us to prosper in our chosen fields by combining elements of art and science, rather than looking at these as
polar opposites.
To sum up, let’s cite the velophile and sometime philosopher with the wild hair, “There are two ways to live:
you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. The most beautiful thing we
can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.” — Albert Einstein
40
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/artists-and-scientists-more-alike-than-different/
41
IEEE, an association dedicated to advancing innovation and technological excellence for the benefit of humanity,
designed to serve professionals involved in all aspects of the electrical, electronic, and computing fields and related
areas of science and technology. IEEE’s roots go Founded in1884, when only one major electrical industry, the
telegraph, had existed since the 1840s connecting the world with a data communications system faster than the speed
of transportation. The telephone and electric power and light industries had just gotten underway.