On the nature of phenomenon
Why does one do, what ones does? Cried da Vinci. For his absolution and desire to undertand the natural world, limited not by scope but through the instruments of his time alongside the ignorance of yesteryear. And yet, still to this day, philosophy has proven to be a unique discipline. It has spent over 2000 years attempting to define itself to no avail. Are we closer to understanding life, the universe, and everything? Is there a restaurant at the end of the universe? Is the answer to all of this 42…?
Despite writing this monologue of monologues, I wish to express my humility in this subject. In true scientist-fashion, the more I discover, the vaster the landscape becomes. And so, I hope that you, dear reader, can humour me while I pretend to be somewhat knowledgeable.
Nature and the Divine
The dynamics between art and science is a fascinating conversation piece. Personally, I do not see art and science as existing within separate categories since there is an art to discovery and human development. Creativity and creative thinking often applied to artistic expression can also be found within great scientists. These people saw connections in otherwise mundane experiences. Not confiding within standardised limits is very helpful in thinking different. For this reason, I believe that an expression for the divine does not necessrily lessen the factuality of nature. A good example of this is with the genius of Leonardo da Vinci.
“Leonardo’s interest in the soul occupied him as both artist and scientist. He sought to depict the soul in art, as had Aristides, through the depiction of affection and emotion; he sought to locate the soul, as a philosopher and scientist, in his anatomical dissections and drawings.” — J. Kline, Temple University
In a famous drawing from the late 1480s, da Vinci posited that the soul was positioned within the skull at the convergence of the senses. It may be here, in the intersection of art and science, that Leonardo’s complex relationship with Pliny can best be seen. Leonardo seems not to have followed Pliny’s descriptions as a guide for what to paint, but how to paint, and this, in turn, may have helped to shape the direction of his scientific exploration into the nature of the human animal.
The Beauty of Mathematics
As most of us can appreciate, Mathematics is the human attempt to codify the divine laws of the universe. I say divine as the one who would wield such omniscience would certainly be within the province of a deity, if such a thing were to exist. Humans, on the other hand, have come reletively far in understanding the fundamentals of nature. However, the road is long and arduous. What can we learn from people like Leonardo in grasping the nature of phenomenon, if at all?
“An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.” — Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, Introduction. 1814
While physics has peered into a master theory, of ‘everything’, a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe.
A Theory of Everything would unify all the fundamental interactions of nature: gravitation, strong interaction, weak interaction, and electromagnetism. But does this also explain the non-physical elements of nature?
