Flowers bloom in April
Everything grows
Under the epidemic
Gather in the clouds
Recently, Xu Jiang, vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, president of the China Oil Painting Society, director of the Academic Committee of the China Academy of Art, and oil painting artist, was invited to participate in the spring open class of the 2022 Huxin Lecture Hall of Westlake University, where he also invited Tian Gang, a famous mathematician, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and dean of the Institute of Theoretical Science of Westlake University, who respectively traced back to the origin of the world with the audience from different perspectives of art and science, and walked into the depths of all things in the world together.
Famous mathematician, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tian Gang, dean of the Institute of Theoretical Sciences of Westlake University, delivered a speech
Due to the epidemic situation, Tian Gang led everyone online to approach the beauty of mathematics. He pointed out that the wonderful thing about mathematics is that it can express the complex changes in the world and universe around it through its own simplicity and precision. From the abstract beauty of mathematics, the beauty of simplicity to the beauty of unity, there are many wonderful laws in the depths of all things that we are unexpected, deep, and highly advanced. Finally, he shared one of his favorite couplets:
Heavenly path geometry, wanpin manifolds first self-preservation
The variations are infinite, and the measure of solitude has the same
Vice Chairman of China Federation of Literature and Literature, President of China Oil Painting Society,
Xu Jiang, director of the Academic Committee of the China Academy of Art and oil painting artist, delivered a speech
After listening to the vast starry sky of mathematics depicted by Tian Gang, Xu Jiang recounted the history of China's aesthetic education enlightenment a hundred years ago and the significance of aesthetic education in the new era, he said that science and art complement each other, we talk about aesthetic education, not only the aesthetic education of art colleges, not only professional and professional aesthetic education, but also as the aesthetic education of young people's values education, and the aesthetic education of China's national style spiritual education.
Xu Jiang stressed that in such an era, true aesthetic education will maintain the flesh, maintain real life, maintain the sensitivity of the bones, and maintain the way of educating people. Get started with labor, read and nourish the heart, use continuous labor to train dexterous memory, cultivate the taste and thinking of memory, and let this taste and thinking be integrated into the skills, raise your hand to leave incense, and swing the pen wonderfully.
The beauty of mathematics shared by Tian Gang and the idea of aesthetic education proposed by Xu Jiang have triggered everyone's thinking about beauty and all things. In the final dialogue session, Tian Gang, Xu Jiang and Shi Yigong, president of Westlake University, walked together to the depths of all things around science and art.
Q1
How does art collide with science, and how to interpret science in an artistic way?
Xu Jiang: Today's academies of fine arts not only have national oil, oil paintings, prints, and sculptures, but also comprehensive art and digital art. The art number is not only a change of tools, it has brought about changes in sensibility and rationality, and has brought about changes in many ideas, which has profoundly changed the connotation of teaching and educating people in the Academy of Fine Arts.
In 2000, I had an exhibition in Berlin in which I painted a contrast between the Great Wall and the Berlin Wall, entitled "Landscapes of History." The curators of this art center believe that history is time, time has no scenery, and this painting should be called "the topology of urban culture". I didn't understand it at the time, and I thought it had something to do with the topology of mathematics. Years later, I thought this curator was very fashionable, and he gave me an important idea of urban cultural geography at that time, which was topology, because the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall use the same wall word. I'm going to give this example as an analogy, we tend to the peak of human knowledge from different profiles, and we meet at the peak, which I think is very good.
Tian Gang: Professor Xu just mentioned that the Great Wall and The Berlin Wall have walls, and they have different shapes and sizes, but some of the connotations and functions they reflect may be related. Topology is concerned with a very stable or very special nature, and this idea may be of some help to the artist.
Many years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was both a famous artist and a famous scientist, and the mathematical component of his artwork made his paintings more expressive, and I think many artists unconsciously applied a lot of scientific methods when creating. In modern society, the combination of science and technology and art is getting closer and closer. I went to see an exhibition a few weeks ago and saw artists using current technology to reconstruct some works of art, which I think means that art and science can have more collisions in the future.
Shi Yigong: In Teacher Tian's lecture, he mentioned that there are 17 kinds of geometric dense shops in the Spanish Red Palace, which is actually very shocking, and it can be said that both art and science can interpret art. I think everyone is more or less a scientist and an artist, but in the present, by modern standards, we can't directly call ourselves scientists or artists, but we certainly have experiences and feelings in this regard. It seems to me that art and science are everywhere, and from this point of view, they interpret each other.
Q2
What is the intersection of science and art?
Xu Jiang: We can encounter it everywhere in life. I'll give you a familiar example here, the apple logo is an apple with a leaf on it. This is related to the fact that the object of Worship in Jobs's mind is Turing, Turing was chased by the disease, and finally ate the poisoned apple and died, so this simple figure has his lifelong remembrance. The leaf is exactly the same shape as the apple's mouth, and I don't know what laws the math uses to explain it, but I think that anything new is born after it has lost itself. Such a graphic has so much truth embedded in it, and the key lies in how we look at it.
Tian Gang: Science not only seeks truth, but also beauty. The beauty of science may be more of a rational beauty, and art may pursue more sensual beauty, both of which are important and indispensable in our lives. If we taste carefully in life, we will observe many intersections of science and art, including some scientific achievements that will also be reflected through art. Just in the lecture I talked about the sphere architecture, it reflects the combination of science and art, the architecture design is circular, this is the pursuit of artistic sense, at the same time it needs to consider the structural stability, so we must use the principles of science. The intersection of science and art can be said to be ubiquitous.
Shi Yigong: I think that in the depths of everything in the world, the intersection of science and art is our existence, which is this universe.
Q3
If a scientific research report and a painting burn at the same time, in the case that people will not be injured, will you save the painting first or save the report first?
Xu Jiang: This is actually a dangerous temptation, this temptation makes me make mistakes, if I am not afraid of making mistakes, I will definitely save the painting first. Why? Because the report can be rewritten, this may be remembered in his mind, the painting is the only one, its time limit has passed, so we have to save the painting first.
Tian Gang: I think Teacher Xu is very reasonable, first of all, which one we have to save first, mainly to see its value. A very valuable painting, we really should be able to save first; if this scientific report is just a scientific report for us, it can indeed be done again. If there is a very valuable scientific research idea, I judge this myself, I may not be able to rewrite it, then I will first consider my scientific research results, after all, I am a scientist.
Shi Yigong: I think that if it is my painting and the scientific research report of Teacher Tian Gang, I must save the scientific research report first; if it is The painting of Teacher Xu Jiang and my scientific research report, I must save the painting first, and my report can be rewritten. I think what Teacher Tian said just now is very correct, and it is indeed to see its value.
Q4
From the micro to the macro, everything in the world is extremely orderly on the ultimate level, why is it so universally beautiful? Will there be a first push?
Xu Jiang: Frankly speaking, I didn't understand this question, and to let me understand this problem, I had to go to Teacher Tian or Teacher Shi for two years to understand the role of the first push. But I know very well that when the apple hit Newton's head, Newton wrote Gravity when he returned; if it had been smashed on Beethoven's head, would Beethoven have written the Fifth Symphony earlier? No one knew they needed the Fifth Symphony before it was scored, but after it was scored, the hearts of people all over the world were nurtured, and this was art.
Tian Gang: It is true that from the perspective of our scientists, there are many regular things in the world. With the continuous deepening of human understanding of nature, more deep phenomena and laws will be discovered, and the deeper they go, the more unified these laws are, which indeed has a sense of mystery and magic, and has universal beauty. Phenomena and laws do exist objectively, and I don't know if there is anything behind them.
If we look closely, we will notice that there is a certain similarity between these different phenomena and laws, but at different levels and in different depths. This seems to be the same as the dense paving mentioned in my lecture, perhaps the "dense paving" can be used as an analogy to the cycle of life, and the human cognition of nature is also similar to the "dense paving" from the perspective of the depth axis.
Shi Yigong: When I see this question, I think of life itself. The human body is composed of many cells, there are many molecules in the cell, and finally a bunch of atoms, which can be said to be disordered in themselves, but in the end they form a human body that can function in a very orderly manner, which is indeed incredible. The first push, this classmate may refer to the external force to promote, rather than refer to natural evolution, this question has no answer. Whether it is looking at the human body, or looking at the natural landscape, the stars of the universe, we only use the current vision and the current way of thinking to see the world around us, and I think that appreciating beauty is an instinct that we have. Why there is such incredible beauty in the world, in my opinion, is because it exists, and existence itself is a kind of beauty.
Q5
When we are faced with choices, should we use more rational analysis to make choices, or should we listen to our own wishes?
Xu Jiang: I don't think we should separate rationality from sensibility, because in our sensibility today, there is quite a lot of our rational knowledge, and there are also quite a lot of our perceptual things that are dominated by our daily life. For example, I just talked about seeking truth from science and seeking beauty from art, is science not beautiful, and art not true? Obviously not! Therefore, just now Professor Tian said in an affectionate tone that this formula is beautiful and beautiful, and that the sense of beauty will always exist in his heart and is self-evident. Isn't art real? Art is also truth-seeking. It is precisely because the artist has always had doubts about this truth, so he is always pursuing it.
I think of Su Dongpo's "Chibi Fu", his friend "mourns the beard of my life, and envies the infinity of the Yangtze River". Su Dongpo said, "Ke Yi Zhi Fu Shui and Yue Hu? The deceased is like si, but not the past; the surplus is like the other, and the pawn is like the long. "Look at the world with change, the world does not exist for a minute, look at the world with unchanged, the world will always exist." He finally came up with the fact that what really worked for us was the breeze on the river and the bright moon in the mountains. So we have to face nature, face life, face the times, integrate our feelings, and invest in our creation.
Tian Gang: I think that the use of reason and according to will does not need to be completely separated, because when we do rational analysis, there are often factors of our own will. The key is to have a degree. When faced with a specific choice, the degree of willingness, if your will infringes on the interests of others, is certainly not suitable. It is difficult to grasp this degree, but it is necessary to make a proper analysis according to your own situation or environment, and finally make a correct choice.
Shi Yigong: Based on past understanding and rational analysis, I will say what I want emotionally; surely after another rational analysis, I will say what I do not want intellectually. In fact, these are all based on my rational thinking and feelings, so whether it is my so-called intuitive will or rational analysis, the two cannot be completely separated.
*The above content is based on the on-site Q&A session.
The source | Westlake University Huxin Lecture Hall
Editor| Tong Gexin Xing Ke Zhao Yu cen
Review | Ding Jianfeng Xu Yuan
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