Art and Belief by David W. Bolam, James L. Henderson (review)

Books 367 Sidney in his An Apologiefor Poetrie in 1595recognized that works of verbal art make no statements at all: ‘The Poet . . .nothing affirms, and therefore neuer lyeth.’ The Universe of the Mind. George E. Owen. John Hopkins Press, London, 1971. 349 pp., illus. E2.35. This is essentially a history of mathematics and of someaspects of physics. The first 50pages would be of interest to Leonard0 readers who are particularly interested in Euclidean geometry. The remainder of the book requires advancedtraining in mathematics and physics. Art and Belief. David W. Bolam and James L. Henderson. Schocken Books, New York, 1969. 206 pp., illus. Reviewed by: RichardH. Rogers* This book is in reality two separate books by two different authors each dealing with certain facets of the spiritual state of humanity in the 20th century. The first part on art was written by Bolam and is divided into two sections. The first deals with the conflict that has arisen in this century between what society expects of the artist and what the artist has produced. The factors that have contributed to this conflict are numerous but their common denominator can be said to be accelerated change. These accelerated changes have occurred in every area of the structure of society from the catastrophic upheavals of the World Wars to the reevaluation of the very nature of reality and of man himself through the work of men such as Einstein, Planck, Freud and Jung. The second section deals with the ways in which artists have met the challengesof accelerated change. The author has chosen to let the artists speak for themselves throughout this book by illustrating each point with well selected quotes by a large number of artists working in the plastic arts, literature , music and cinema. The link between the first part of the book and the second part on belief by Henderson is expressed by the selection of the following quotation from Hendrick Kraemer’s book World Cultures and World Religions: ‘Art, being in our present epoch of religious and philosophical diversity and atrophy, the most universal, easily understandable language between men of culture all over the world, and so being practically the substitute religion of today, is a great winner of souls.’ Henderson begins with brief summaries of the beliefs of the various religions as they are applied in the 20th century and then proceeds to the appraisal and assessment of some of the men and women who have sought to reinterpret their faiths and to offset the erosion of these faiths from the effects of nationalism, socialism and secularism. These secular beliefs are explored as are a number of * 137E. Woodlawn, San Antonio, Texas 78212, U.S.A. ‘alternative panaceas’, such as science, existentialism and even racism. The author concludes with a study of the prospects of our beliefs as they appear in ‘themirrors of art, depth psychology and modern science’. Great Ideas in Information Theory, Language and Cybernetics. Jaggit Singh. Dover Publications, New York, 1966. 338 pp., illus. 52.50. Reviewed by :Harold Cohen” Singh’s magic carpet does not give the reader a smoothride. It dartsaboutthe cyberneticlandscape, pausing briefly for an exciting idea here, gleefully following an engaging notion there. The spotlight with which it illuminates these Great Ideas is everso -slightly rose-colored but this is a tourist trip, after all, and one would not want an unenthusiastic guide. All the same, those of Singh’stravelling companions who have not already done at least part of the trip on foot will return home with little sense of the geography of the place, for the route taken from one Great Idea to the next is dimly lit and offersonly an illusion ofcontinuity. Theuninitiated reader will have a good deal of difficulty, for example, in figuring out what neural networks have to do with artificial intelligenceand may not reach the Epilogue to get the answer: which is not too much. ‘Thinking ’ machines and the neural structure of the brain are, nevertheless, presented as the two main, and interwoven, themes of the book, although the author’s apparently unshakeable belief that the computer’s circuitry is-or in some obscure way should be-equivalent to the neurological structure...