Physics and 20th-CenturyCulture

There was a young lady namedBright,

Who traveled much faster than light.

She started one day

In the relative way,

And returned on the previous night.--Anonymous, quoted in Flash!, 1939

Chaos/Complexity (briefly)

Linearity = smooth changes Proportionality between inputs and outputs

Non-linearity = abrupt changes Straw that breaks the camel’s back, or outputs NOT

proportional to inputs Chaos = unpredictable behavior resulting from

non-linearity of underlying parameters ANDsensitivity to initial conditions Two nearly identical states evolve into quite different

states But two identical states evolve into identical states Both systems are deterministic (not random)

What does chaos explain?

Behavior of complex systems Weather and butterfly effect Function of human brain Phase transitions (early universe)

Pinball machine Self-organizing systems

Fractals (recursive construction)• Map coastlines, capillaries, heartbeat timing, etc.

Biological systems

Is it physics or “only” mathematics? No new physical constants have appeared Non-linear kinematics, but no new physical laws

Koch curves

Task of lecture

How to characterize physics-cultureinteractions--refining metaphors Not “influence” but “resonance”

Four case studies of physics and culture Multiple viewpoints in visual art & physics Time--public, private and relativistic Crisis in rationality in Weimar Germany Public visions of “The Physicist”

Physics “changes theworld” after 1850

Material changes Electrification as “environmental revolution” Nuclear weapons & the Cold War Solid-state electronics & the Computer Age

Conceptual changes Cartesian separation of subject/object

overcome in Special Relativity and QM World of the Small unlike world of experience World of the Large too vast to comprehend

Metaphors of relationship

Do changes in physics “influence” changes inother cultural expressions? Too causal and mechanical? Many European intellectuals personally acquainted

so “influence” two-way? Cultural expressions differ and are not easily

understood across “linguistic” barriers? “Resonance” in cultural expressions?

Small stimuli enhance large vibrations in a system ifformer match period of latter

Case 1. Perspective(s)

Picasso on Cubism, 1923:

“Mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry,psychoanalysis, music and what not havebeen related to Cubism to give it an easierinterpretation. All this has been purenonsense, which has only succeeded inblinding people with theories....”

Multiple viewpoints in thevisual arts and physics

Laporte, 1949: Non-Euclidean geometryof SR (1905) “caused” Cubism (1907)

Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,1907: classic origin of Cubism

Rejects “perspectivalism” of Renaissance• Rules for locating 3-d world on 2-d surface• Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, 1504

Multiple views of same object united into a singlemoment of time; no depth; tactile, not visible space Observers must construct the image mentally

Raphael, Marriage of theVirgin, 1504

http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/raphael/RAF011.html

Renaissance perspective

•2-d size linked to 3-d depth

•Vanishing point

•Viewer separated from scenedepicted

Responses to Les Demoisellesd’Avignon•Colleague Braque: It appears as ifPicasso has been drinkingturpentine in order to spit fire.

•Patron Leo Stein: “You've beentrying to paint the fourth dimension.How amusing!”

•Russian collector, Schukin: “What aloss for French art!”

MOMA: “Although nine years passedbefore Picasso exhibited this paintingpublicly, the influence of Les Demoisellesspread like a shock wave, carrying with itthe news that the known limits ofpainting had been shattered.”

http://www.moma.org/docs/collection/paintsculpt/c40.htm

Multiple viewpoints cont.

Is Cubism applied relativity theory? Neither Picasso nor Braque had contact

with scientists or literature of science Early Cubist publicists (e.g., Guillaume

Apollinaire, 1913) stress 4th-dimension Language of interpretation filled with scientific

words, but no understanding of the physics Chronology reversed; non-Euclidean

geometry of space-time (i.e., GeneralRelativity) arose after birth of Cubism!

Apollinaire on Cubism, 1913

“Cubism ... aims not an an art of imitation, but at an art of conception.... Most of the new painters depend on mathematics withoutknowing it.... Until now, the 3 dimensions of Euclid were sufficientto the restiveness of young artists yearning for the infinite.... Today,scientists no longer limit themselves to these 3 dimensions .... Thepainters have been led quite naturally, one might say by intuition, topreoccupy themselves with new possibilities of spatialmeasurement, which in the language of the modern studias, aredesignated by the 4th dimension. Regarded from the plastic pointof view, the 4th appears to spring from the other 3 dimensions: itrepresents the immensity of space eternalizing itself, thedimensions of the infinite; the 4th dimension endows objects withplasticity.”

Gibberish, from the viewpoint of physics But space clearly being reconceptualized in art & physics

Case 2. Time--private &local to public & absolute

Railroads require common time, 1850s Astronomical observatories “sell” time over telegraph

lines

Standard time zones created, 1884 Prime Meridian Conference, Wash. D.C.

International Conference of Time, 1912 Synchronize clocks everywhere with radio signals

from Eiffel Tower

Thus, public time becomes standardized Symbol of authority, homogeneity, depersonalization

of mass European (and American) culture

Private time becomes realyet “relative” in literature

Writers praise AE & end of absolute time William Carlos Williams, “St. Francis Einstein of the

Daffodils,” 1921April Einstein...rebellious, laughing....has come among the daffodils shoutingthat flowers and menwere created relatively equal.Oldfashioned knowledge isDead under the blossoming peachtrees.

Poets Frost, MacLeish, Cummings, Pound, Eliot all refer to Einstein intheir poems

Duration or experience of time unlike clock time(Bergson, Thomas Mann)

Stream-of-consciousness (Joyce, Wolf) Sartre: “The theory of relativity applies in full to the universe of fiction”

Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922

Molly Bloom fading into sleep:... my belly is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am

I getting too fond of it the last they sent from ORourkes was as flatas a pancake he makes his money easy Larry they call him with theold mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle ofhogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt get anyone todrink God spare his spit for fear hed die of the drouth or I must do afew breathing exercises I wonder is that antifat any good mightoverdue it thin ones are not so much the fashion now garters thatmuch I have the violet pair I wore today thats all he bought me outof the cheque he got on the first…

Note the verb tenses--authoritarian public time rejected! Einstein’s time not absolute, but not idiosyncratic or

private (reference frames have time)

Case 3. Causality, crisisand rationality after WWI

Spiritual crisis in Germany amongintellectuals and professors by 1918 Technology, science, reason of WWI rejected for

Neo-romanticism, existentialism, intuition Spengler’s Decline of the West, 1918

Response of the German physicists Emphasized science as creativity not technical utility Physics presented as also in “crisis” Acausality of QM interpreted as anti-reason and anti-

mechanical determinism Explains rapid German acceptance of QM?

Case 4: 20c visions of “ThePhysicist”

1905-40: “Geniuses”discovering nature’sdeep secrets that arearcane & inaccessible ”Knowledge for its own

sake” Intellectual and

cultural elites

London Times, 1919

“Boys who won the war,”1940-55Oppenheimer at Ground Zero, 1945

Time Magazine, June 1946

“Atomic Power” by FredKirby, 1946

Oh this world is at a tremble with its strength and mighty power.

They’re sending up to Heaven, to get the brimstone fire.

Take warning my dear brothers, be careful how you plan.

You’re working with the power of God’s own holy hand.

Refrain Atomic power, atomic power

Was given by the mighty hand of God. (2x)

You remember two great cities in a distant foreign land.

When scorched from the face of earth, the power of Japan.

Be careful my dear brother, don’t take away the joy.

But use it for the good of man, and never to destroy.

Refrain

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, paid a big price for their sins.

When scorched from the face of earth, their battles could not win.

But on that day of judgment, when comes a greater power.

We will not know the minute,and we’ll not know the hour.

Refrain

Sung by the Buchanan Brothers, RCA Victor

Pawns of the Cold War,1955-90

Oppy’s 1947 “physicistshave known sin” Origins of history of science

Kippert’s In the Matter of J.Robert Oppenheimer, 1956

Dürrenmatt’s ThePhysicists, 1962 Compare to Stoppard’s

Arcadia 70% of US federal R&D

dollars in 1960-70s were“defense related,” evenmore in USSR

Post Cold-Warriors, 1990 -

As theologians andmetaphysicians Leon Lederman, The God

particle, 1993 Eric Schulman, A briefer history

of time: From the Big Bang to theBig Mac, 1998

Marcelo Gleiser, The prophet andthe astronomer, 2002

“Templeton Prize for ProgressToward Research orDiscoveries about SpiritualRealities,” $1.4 million world’s largest annual monetary

prize for individuals