So you can watch the video above if you like, but I’ll try and paraphrase what I took from it so you don’t HAVE to watch if you wanna understand what I’m talking about.
Basically, the discussion is, “Does Math really exist or is it a purely human construction?” Since every science is the study of some actual, existing and measurable “thing,” (e.g. biology is life, physics is forces, etc.) where does that leave math? Do we discover math or are we inventing it when a mathematician publishes a paper about some new formula?
Maybe you should just watch the damn video. Subscribe to the channel, ‘cuz they are awesome and enriching.
Does Art Exist?
OK, so here’s where I come in. For artists of any discipline, are you inventing/creating your art, or discovering it? At first you may want to say, “Of course we create art! I’m an original!”
Well, for starters, Michaelangelo famously said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to uncover it.”
I’m certainly not certain of this type of belief, mind you. Michaelangelo was speaking based on a belief in the divine that influenced all his interpretations of the world. Since I don’t have a deified version of the world, the idea that all creation must naturally come from The Creator doesn’t hold mustard.
It does wrap things up nicely, though, to think that all art is a type of Frankenstein’s monster collage of influences and mimicry, rather than the man dreamt into existence by another man from Borges’ “The Circular Ruins.”
| He doesn't know it yet, but he can walk through fire. |
Poets in workshops often speak of the work in terms of there being an objective or absolute poem within them; the true skill of poetry is then communicating it to the tangible world properly.
“I wanted to go in one direction, but the poem took me in another.”
Sometimes the poem is even portrayed as an antagonistic force.
Apart from the artistic creative process, think about a really complex poetic form like a sestina. Fulfilling all the demands of this form, which you can find detailed here, causes a final product that seems unalterable, a house of cards. One of the most famous contemporary examples of this is Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina.”
Just to give you a further idea of this, here’s a graphical representation of the algorithm of how the end words of each line in a sestina fit together.
Just to give you a further idea of this, here’s a graphical representation of the algorithm of how the end words of each line in a sestina fit together.
Music has all sorts of mathematical attributes, and while I am hardly capable of speaking to all of them, let’s take one example. The chromatic scale divides an instrument like a piano into a perfect set of equally-spaced notes. You can even express it visually like this:
Now, this is not true on every instrument, but that is due, in my understanding, to the specific range of octaves any given instrument is capable of playing, not because the chromatic scale is imperfect. (Let me know if I’m wrong about this, please.)
Is math discovering this scale that exists whether or not math knows about it, or are we creating the numbers and measurements to match reality?
Prepare to Embiggen
This kind of argument seems to be veering into a grander discussion: Artistic creation/expression requires humanity, discovery does not.
It’s not too far off from whether we are victims of fate or not. Do we make decisions or are we simply a random occurrence caused by other random occurrences (the kind of fate possible in the absence of a greater power)?
OK, using “random” kind of makes you think that it couldn't possibly be fate if it’s unpredictable.
There’s that bit in Futurama where they’re at the horse track and they have a quantum finish instead of a photo finish. Since the professor loses based on the final result, the joke is his protest that, “You changed the results by observing them!” It’s a comment on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
This is also what Schrodinger’s Cat speaks to: Before we observe the cat, is it both alive AND dead? No, the example is simply a joke on the idea of probabilities. The cat is EITHER alive or dead, but we can’t say for sure unless we observe it, thereby forcing only one result into existence.
How does this involve fate? OK, let’s get real small and talk about some quantum electrodynamics: A photon will always go through either this hole or that hole, but we only know exactly where it’s gone when we look. However, it won’t always do the same thing. One time you check and it’s gone through Hole A and maybe the next 20 times it’s gone through Hole B. You can’t reliably predict the movement, only the probability of that movement.
You have to calculate probabilities. In this way, there are always predictable probabilities, which is where fate comes in. We aren’t trapped in a box made by God, more like we have an invisible electric fence. We can do anything in the front yard of probabilities, but we never stray into the street. Isn’t that a type of fate? I feel like any kind of restraint on my future is a type of fate.
Whether or not we are able to calculate events to this degree is perhaps only a matter of time and the progression of math “uncovering” the perfect way. I don’t know, maybe the future will create a nice Hegel-style “synthesis” of the two opposing viewpoints.
Back to basics for me, am I discovering a poem when I write one? Am I inventing it? Of course, everything I’ve ever read, heard, experienced and so on influences what I write and how I write it. Even the language I write in creates certain probabilities (pentameter lends itself particularly well to the English language, sexameter to French).
Am I just stretching probabilities out so much that they contain everything? Is that just the delusion I need to carry on?
