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Leonardo, Vol. 10, pp. 313-314. Pergamon Press 1977. Printed in Great Britain COMMENTS ON DAVID L. DRABKIN'S BOOK FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE: NA TURE'S ARCHITECTURE Arthur L. Loeb* David L. Drabkin's book [1] is a labor of love. It is dedicated to his late wife Stella Drabkin, an artist. He was the first to crystallize human hemoglobin. The bulk ofhis book consists of 51 beautiful photographic prints, six in color, of hemoglobin crystals from various sources, photographed under various conditions, in various magnifications and polarizations, some in positive, others in negative prints. The architect Norman N. Rice provides the Foreword, which was to have been written by the late Louis J. Kahn, architect and long-time friend of the Drabkins. Drabkin provides the Introduction, describing a Happening consisting of his photographs at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1958 entitled 'Prelude, Performance and Aftermath'. Both the Foreword and the Introduction are addressed to the differences and analogies between scientific and artistic activity. Crystals, whether as minerals, as snow crystals or as hemoglobin, have long struck people by their beauty. Some have said they are forms ofart. But they are not, for art involves at least a human decision. The orderliness and symmetry of crystals appeal not only to the intellect but also to the aesthetic sense. Undoubtedly, this appreciation of and search for order underline creative activity in both science and art. Cyril Stanley Smith is fond of pointing out that snow crystals are invariably depicted as symmetrical, whereas in point of fact they rarely are. The book under discussion clearly and lucidly refutes the fallacy ofconsidering nature's objects, visual aspects, sounds, etc. as art per se. What we have in the book are examples ofartful still-life photography, the images being of a scale not visible to the unassisted eye. To produce them, the human decision process was involved in the selection of light polarization and special printing techniques and in the use of composites and special juxtapositions. Drabkin finds an appreciative critique comparing one of his plates of the monoclinic 'horse-type' twins to a nonfigurative work by Moholy-Nagy unacceptable. However, books like this will inevitably blur the distinction between so-called figurative and nonfigurative or abstract art. By now artists accept the reality of these crystals, and their visual impact is bound to affect painters and sculptors. It is reasonable to assume that an aerial view ofhis native Holland and skyscraper skeletons influenced some of Piet Mondrian's so-called abstract paintings. It is known from his early series of tree studies *Structures and communications scientist and musician, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. (Received 15 Feb. 1977) 313 that some of his later paintings do in fact represent for him the structural essence of trees. What is fascinating about a crystal is this type of reduction to an ultimate structural simplicity. As crystals increase in size, a complexity arises that is the result of interactions of thermal and gravitational forces; crystal dislocations, in seemingly endless variations, provide pleasing patterns that stem from the still recognizable theme of basic simplicity. Thus the difference between the figurative and the nonfigurative in the artistic sense may be difficult to distinguish. The author quotes and discusses Jacob Bronowski (p. 14), accepting his view that 'the creative act is alike in art and in science, but ... cannot be identical'; however he takes issue with Bronowski's statement that 'the position of truth is an exact boundary which encloses him [the scientist] in a way it does not constrain the poet or the painter' [2]. Since I was trained as a scientist, and have experience in teaching both engineering and art, I have been asked to give my opinion on the differences between the two. I find very little difference, except that in the arts I permit myself to say 'I feel that ...' or 'I believe that .. .'. Nevertheless, I expound on the elegance of a certain mathematical equation much to the consternation (for different reasons) of students of both art and science. As long as creativity is not understood, a distinction between scientific and artistic creative processes will remain speculative, and...

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