Report on the International Colloquium on Relationships Between Science, Art and Philosophy, Paris, November 1980

Leonardo, Vol. 14, No.4, pp. 297-298, 1981 Printedin Great Britain 0024-094X/81 1040297-02$02.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd. REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON REL~TIONSHIPS BETWEEN SCIENCE, ART AND PHILOSOPHY, PARIS, NOVEMBER 1980 R. Daudel* and N. Lemaire d'Agaggio** 1. Introduction This Colloquium, held between 13 and 15 November 1980, was organized by the recently established European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Humanities and Unesco. There were about 200 participants, including members of the Academy and of the Unesco Secretariat and invited guests. The Colloquium was opened by Yuri Novozhilov, Deputy Director-General of Unesco, who said the establishment of the Academy was very important because it is ready to face problems of humanity at present as well as those anticipated in the future and because it provides a link between Academies of European countries. R. Daudel, President of the Academy, stressed the necessity ofdeveloping a synthesis of present-day widely dispersed knowledge. He proposed a new classification of the sciences and reminded the participants of the strong interactions between the sciences, the arts and the humanities. He suggested that the Academy be guided by the words of the German philosopher Gehlen: 'By nature humans are beings of culture.' N. Lew.dire d' Agaggio, Secretary-General of the Academy, outlined the program of the Academy as including: (I) recognition and fulfilment of humanity's scientific and cultural aspirations; (2) detection and development of novel ideas and (3) search for characteristics of Europe's cultural identity and reflection on Europe's mission in the world, in particular with respect to developing nations [see Leonardo 14,244 (1981)]. In an introductory paper, Rene Huyghe, Vice-President of the Academy, stated that the method of the physical sciences of the 19th and 20th centuries have excessively dominated the currents of thought of the past in which imagination played an important role. The scientific way of thinking was necessary to bring back a perception of objective reality, but thought, thus limited, is damaging because intuitive comprehension of the world provided by artists is neglected. Qualitative factors must regain a role, since they can influence the quantitative results of scientific research. He subscribes to the view of Goethe: 'Beauty manifests secret laws of nature that otherwise would have been eternally hidden from us' [see Leonardo 14,314 (1981)]. *Physical chemist, Academie EuropeendesSciences, desArts et des Lettres.60 Monsieur Ie Prince, 75006. Paris, France. **Painter(sameaddress) (Received 5 Feb. 1981) 297 2. Session I, Science and Art Giorgio Careri (physicist, Italy) discussed the question of the meaning of order in the natural sciences and the visual fine arts. He pointed out that in the sciences order is defined quantitively on the basis of observational and experimental evidence that distinguishes the characteristics of phenomena. On the other hand, order in the visual arts involves communicable, nonverbal correlations among the parts and the whole of an artwork [see Leonardo 14, 146 (1981)]. Marcel Bessis (research investigator in biology, France) pointed out the beauty of red corpuscles in blood as seen in images produced by a scanning electron microscope, which remind him of some of Joan Mire's artworks. He asked whether this resemblance was a matter of chance. In nature one finds a number of identical forms at different scales of size, and the number is not limitless. When artists present such forms, do they do so because they have an instinctive awareness of the laws that govern natural forms, that is, the astonishing similarity between the forms is due to an inherent characteristic of the human brain, or is the similarity only an illusion that provides fascination? Albert Bruylants (chemist, Belgium) discussed the role of chemistry in the visual arts, pointing out developments that have been made in the provision ofsynthetic paints of different colors. Christian Cavadia (computer artist, France) drew attention to the availability of personal digital microcomputers whose capacity to produce complex pictures in color on a cathode ray tube for photographic reproduction and in plotted form can effectively compete with certain lines produced by artists by hand. He had slides of examples of such pictures projected on a screen for view by the participants. Since few artists...