Conference Report

The second biennial Science Matters (Scimat) conference was held in Estoril, Portugal, October 5-7, 2009.

The idea behind the Scimat concept was expounded by the first speaker Lui Lam (USA and China): everything in Nature is part of Science.  This does not mean that science is making a take-over bid for the humanities.  Far from it, the idea is to bring together the sciences and humanities to identify common approaches and highlight areas which complement each other, in ways that enhance both disciplines.  In particular, the ethos of Scimat is to reject the exclusion of the human element and the assumption that science is about simple, deterministic systems.

Brigitte Hoppe (Germany) in her contribution followed the history of the sciences and arts since late antiquity.  She traced turning points which led from the Greek and renaissance ideas of imitating nature to modern ideas of interpreting nature.

Fusions of individual sciences and art were all represented at this conference: ChemArt, BioArt, AstroArt, GeoArt and Neuroarthistory.  Maria Burguete (Portugal) emphasized the unity of art with chemistry and biology.  She sees these fusions as cultural crossroads, allowing new insights on the world and how we relate to it.  M. Serrano Pinto (Portugal) spoke of his work with Isabel Malaquias on “GeoArt”.  They define this subject as “talking about observing or imagining natural objects at various scales and recording the respective images.”  A number of examples were shown to the audience, which displayed the fusion of art and geology from the macro to the micro scale.

As well as scientists and academics from the humanities, there were also present at the conference artists, who had an interest in the sciences.  Linsen Hsia Ngai (USA), an artist with a background in chemical physics and the sculptress Cristina Rocha Leiria (Portugal) delighted the audience with examples of their work.

Identifying common themes for the arts and sciences was the primary topic for Guo-Sheng Wu (China) whose philosophical perspective identified creative freedom as the most important aspect of the common nature of the arts and sciences in terms of their products, creative processes and human element.

The evolutionary metaphor has been widely used in many fields.  Adaptation in terms of the likelihood of increasing fitness of a population, as applied to literary narrative, was the subject of Patrick Colm Hogan’s talk.  Though not in the strict sense adaptive, Patrick Hogan (USA) looked at the sources of many universal properties of literary narrative as a complex result of the interaction of various evolved systems.

An example of a new discipline – Neuroarthistory – was the theme of John Onians’s talk.  He has promoted the idea that we can use neuroscience to answer questions in art history.  In his talk John Onians (UK) stressed the scientific approach to the understanding of art in terms of both conscious and unconscious processes in the human brain.

Quoting T.D. Lee: “Science and Art are as inseparable as two sides of the same coin”, Bing Liu (China) gave a detailed review of historical and current attitudes to the arts and sciences in China.

The conference delegates also heard talks as varied as the Romantic conception of nature (Dolores Martin Moruno, France), Shakespeare’s Othello (Lalita Pandit Hogan), the Arts, Humanity, God and Science (Leonor Beltrán, Portugal) and Objects in Art and Science (this editor).

The theatre was also represented by Ivo Schneider (Germany).  His talk was on science theatre.  There have been recently a number of plays on scientific themes, and Ivo Schneider’s talk covered the history of science theatre from the seventeenth century to the present time.

Whilst on the subject of theatre, last and certainly not least, the delegates were “entertained” by a lecture from Manuel Curado (Portugal).  I say “entertained” as the lecture was itself a piece of theatre.  Afterwards, Manuel Curado showed me his notes, which included stage directions.  Some of the participants in the conference were unsettled by the vigour and drama of the talk, entitled: “Scientists our Greek slaves”.  But whatever one’s reaction to the performance, this reviewer feels confident that none of Manuel Curado’s students falls asleep during one of his lectures!

Nigel Sanitt

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