The Marriage of Art and Science

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It's commonly concieved that Music and Physics cannot co-exist. However, if we analyze the tehcniques used to achieve goals in either pursuit, it's obvious they require imagination and creativity. They too, are both subjects of censorship by their governments. Social commentary in Music and philosophical implications in Physics tend to schock and annoy powerful people:

cover of Bringing Down the Wall

Pictured above is Fang Lizhi from the cover of his book, Bringing Down the Great Wall. Lizhi is a physicist from China who, in the 1970's, was thrusted into political controversy because he and his colleagues had begun to study relativity; a subject that seemed to threaten the philosophical standards set by Lizhi's Communist government. He spent time in jail and abroad, rebelling against the cavalier defenders of Marxism in his country.

Nevertheless, Lizhi went on to fight against his government in a quest to understand what is true about the universe as opposed to what is philosophically acceptable. Bringing Down the Great Wall is a collection of papers he has written in the last 20 years covering democracy, science, and culture in China. Lizhi was no artist, and admitted it was initially alien to him, coming from a society that harshly divides the two:

"..[traveling abroad] have made me intensely aware of a cultural atmosphere in which there is no great divide bewteen science and art. This was perhaps most vividly brought home to me when I saw the Last Supper hanging on the wall at the monastery of Santa Mariea delle Grazie. Was Leonardo an artist? Or was he a scientist? It seems perhaps he was neither, that both science and art were simply the methods he employed in a more unified search for truth and beauty."

[emphasis added]

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