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Trail-Blazing Scientists of the 21st Century Science-Art Renaissance

Those scientists who have insisted that knowledge will never be able to arise from metaphysical intuitions were incorrect. Some 2400 years ago the Greek philosopher Plato observed that the properties of magnetic lodestone had the power to attract and repel inanimate iron. His predecessor, the mathematician Thales, referred to this power as a primeval life force. Plato developed an educational system to find the mathematical secret of this life force from his conviction that All Is Geometry. He wrote that this secret was an invisible geometrical identity hidden within flat plane geometry, however, this information has now become visible.

Science and design: A physicist’s perspective

2008

This international journal of faith, thought, and action is published three times a year in four parallel editions (English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish) by the Committee on Adventist Ministry to College and University Students (AMiCUS) of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

Buckminster fuller and his fabulous designs

Resonance, 2015

Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American designer who created fantastic designs. His non-conformist creative design ability was augmented with an urge to realize the prototypes not only for practical demonstration but also for widespread use. His creations called for new vocabulary such as synergy, tensegrity, Dymaxion, and the eponymous Fullerene. He had a design science philosophy of his own. He thought beyond the design of artifacts. He strived for sustainable living in the global world long before these concepts became important for the world to deal with. He is described as a comprehensive anticipatory design scientist. In this article, only his physical design artifacts that include two of his lasting design contributions, namely, the tensegrity structures and the geodesic domes are discussed. Good designs bring a positive change in the world and the way we live. And great designs remain unchanged for decades, or even centuries, because nothing greater came along after them. Although everyone enjoys the benefits of good designs, the process of design itself is not understood by many because designing is an intensely creative and intellectual activity. Most often, great designs appear to be realized as a flash of an idea, a radical new thought, and a figment of the imagination of a gifted thinker. In reality, good designs, like great discoveries, come about as a result of sustained thought by creative designers who want to improve the environment around them and help change the world they live in. Buckminster Fuller was one such designer. His designs were fabulous. He thought what others did not dare think. He sought design solutions that were superior to everything else. No problem was insignificant to him, nor any problem unsolvable. He thought deeply about household cleaning chores, plumbing, driving a car, perception of size and distance in a world map, and other mundane problems. He also contemplated buildings

Complexity Art: A Pattern of Transdisciplinary Emergent Properties

In the search for a strategic alliance between art, science, technology and nature are facing a new domain of research and contemporary practice in which art ceases to exist as a copy of nature or inspiration of scientific principles to work as does the natural organic world. Since this essential principle that seeks to build structures for dynamic interaction and collaborative systems, the art of complexity can become an important field of transdisciplinary research, able to bridge between disciplines that explore the frontiers of knowledge, which together with a reconceptualization of the artistic discipline itself push their limits in the direction of objects and common problems. This perspective raises an historic opportunity to build foundations and develop a partnership based on a new conception of the research in which disciplines can work in broader contexts with models and methods that transcend them in front of open worlds of emerging fields. In this challenge, and in response to the call of SEAD in its interest to know the lessons learned from the prehistory of the pioneers in working with science, it is pertinent to sketch work pioneer of the Author by her findings, innovations, aesthetic creations and potential applications in fields of technology, of knowledge, aesthetics and culture. The paper includes, therefore, a brief introduction to her creative practice focused on the systemic nature of art in interaction with basic sciences, emerging fields and technologies; at the same time which underlines their role at work with the culture of research, the education of society, science and technologies. This framework proposes a model of art of the complexity of emergent properties built on the basis of the interaction at the frontiers of knowledge, which implies a reformulation of the art, its foundations and methodology. The proposal brings with it a new thought capable of identifying problems and support mechanisms that allow to give a step forward for achieving results. In this regard, advances the idea of a common space for emerging areas between disciplines and is set a provisional table of them around which artists and scientists could develop clouds of joint creativity and find the necessary sources of inspiration for subsequent programmes. At this point, and given that current developments are scattered, are little known and emerging, the Author suggests a set of recommendations and actions aimed at global strategies that woul have that taken into account in the elaboration and implementation of specific programmes which would allow in successive phases promote a fruitful transdisciplinary collaborative work with sciences and technologies.

Robert R. Wilson: Shaping Matter

Leonardo, 2009

This project is supported by the Marjorie Duckworth Malina Fund, which honors the memory of a key longtime supporter of Leonardo/ISAST. The project recognizes Marjorie's dedication to the ideals of international cooperation by emphasizing the participation of artists throughout the world. For information on making a donation to Leonardo/ISAST in memory of Marjorie Duckworth Malina, please visit http://leonardo.info/isast/donations.html.

EVIDENCE FOR DESIGN IN PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY: FROM THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

In the preceding essay, mathematician and probability theorist William Dembski notes that human beings often detect the prior activity of rational agents in the effects they leave behind. Archaeologists assume, for example, that rational agents produced the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone; insurance fraud investigators detect certain ‘‘cheating patterns’’ that suggest intentional manipulation of circumstances rather than ‘‘natural’’ disasters; and cryptographers distinguish between random signals and those that carry encoded messages.

Maxwell's Demons Everywhere: Evolving Design as the Arrow of Time

Scientific Reports, 2014

Science holds that the arrow of time in nature is imprinted on one-way (irreversible) phenomena, and is accounted for by the second law of thermodynamics. Here I show that the arrow of time is painted much more visibly on another self-standing phenomenon: the occurrence and change (evolution in time) of flow organization throughout nature, animate and inanimate. This other time arrow has been present in science but not recognized as such since the birth of thermodynamics. It is Maxwell's demon. Translated in macroscopic terms, this is the physics of the phenomenon of design, which is the universal natural tendency of flow systems to evolve into configurations that provide progressively greater access over time, and is summarized as the constructal law of design and evolution in nature. Knowledge is the ability to effect design changes that facilitate human flows on the landscape. Knowledge too flows.