DOES THE COMPLEXITY
OF SPACE
LIE IN THE COSMOS OR IN CHAOS?
In: Chaos and Complexity
Letters Vol 3, pp 291-293
ISSN;155-3995 © 2005 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
.
The art of painting, as we have already known for a long time, is first and foremost an aesthetic inquiry on the nature of space. It's easy to understand why. The state of being of an aesthetic experience such as a painting, always needs an extension, sometimes of a surface, often of a double dimension, always of some kind of phenomenology of space. Here is the ultimate reason why. In our modern times, even in the case of drawing the structure of a chip, or when we shoot a real event with a video camera, we use an extension as a support. So to say we are using an idea of space already known to us, in the same way in which we use the net. We can use it only because there's an idea of pluri-dimensional space in it that we identified as fundamental: cyber-space, precisely/exactly.
But what is the space? Can we say that we know it for sure?
Even Plato
in the Timeo's dialogue, the big Greek cosmogonic tale of 25 centuries
ago, said that space has a bastard nature. He also admonished that space is
the condition of possibility of being of all phenomena but at the same time
it cannot become a phenomenon.That means that space is the conditio sine qua
non for a phenomenon to appear but it cannot appear in the way phenomenon do.
That's the reason why it has a bastard nature: it allows appearance but it doesn't
appear.So now, it becomes clear how the idea of space is something immersed
in the ontological oscillation, which is something irrepressible. As we've already
seen, it's space's own nature that allows the decline, in the visible manifestation,
of the horizon of beings. This nature of space is the condition of possibility
of every phenomenon's apparition. 25 centuries after Plato, the German philosopher
Immanuel Kant,
attempted to solve the enigma of the nature of space in his "Critique
of the Pure Reason" said: "the space is not an empirical concept,
drawn by external experiences… it is, instead, a necessary representation
a priori, which serves as a fundament to all the other external intuitions".
He would conclude by saying that the intuition of space is the original shape
of sensibility. Space and time are the pure forms, a priori, of sensitivity.And
when, at the beginning of the last century, space and time joined together thanks
tophysics-mathematics in only one quadri-dimensional being called spacetime,
the aesthetical experience of painting became, as a result of physics, aesthetical
search on the nature of spacetime.That's all about philosophy. But talking also
about science with an observation from Albert
Einstein on the genesis of the theory
of relativity, we can understand how the true nature of space is inevitably
implicated with the formal and ideal systems which we call geometry.
Albert Einstein, in fact, had said:…" suddenly I realized that geometry
had a physical meaning " ….
After this consideration and intuition of the great physicist, who had revolutionized
the knowledge of reality, how can we not ask ourselves about the meaning of
the ideal forms of geometry, such as the curvature of spacetime, for instance,
- which is a geometrical form produced by men- clash/coincide with one of the
fundamental forces of nature, the gravitational force? Even better, gravity
is the curvature of spacetime. And so? How can't we wonder also about another
question: What's the form in ontology?
Art is not, and cannot be considered, unrelated to this question. And its own
history testifies and documents this fact.
Art has conducted this query maybe since the beginning of man's history. And
painting realizes a vision of this possible question on the nature of spacetime,
its possible form, before being any other form of aesthetic query, as we have
already said.
My aesthetical experience fed on this query as well. The nature of space, in
my opinion, is a kind of chromatic polyphony of ideal and formal opportunities,
not necessarly axiomatic, as the systems of Euclidean
geometries and not-Euclidean, but conceived as ideal opportunities of
never-ending geometries existing in an unfinished space.
We can't forget that while Albert Einstein was conceiving the theory of relativity
and made us aware of the physical meaning of geometrical forms, philosophy was
analyzing with rigour the formal and primary idealizations of geometry. We have
to remember Edmund
Husserl's studies. He is another popular German philosopher, who, at
the beginning of last century thought geometry was an ideal and eidetic dimension,
defining it as the visual language of idealities non-in-chains concepts.
So to say that the whole phenomenology was subjected to the causal principle,
while this formal and ideal dimension called geometry was not subjected to it.
From now on we could think of space as a dimension hanging on the greatest freedom
of thinking and form joined together that man has ever possessed.
The complexity of any possible notion of space becomes dizzing.
And modernity took charge of this demonstration. Any other possible example
would be superfluous.
At the same time the mathematic
notion of chaos contributed to change the idea of space which was crystallizing
in the geometric systems consolidated/established axiomatically.
We can add something else: if by chaos we mean the inability to foretell the
future evolutions of every
kinetic non-linear system, with the not completely known conditions
of the initial system, we have to admit that the unpredictability of every future
evolution of every system is totally open to a description made by endless ideal
and unknown formality, from a formal and geometrical core of unpredictable descriptions.
So what comes to light as geometrical language, the "visual language of
idealities non-in -chains- concepts ", is not a knowledge of the past,
but is something ineluctable, a necessary knowledge of the future.
We have also to underline, as useful indication, that in the theoretical contemporary
physic some theories are elaborated - for instance the one of the superstrings
- and these theories need many dimensions of space to explain their mathematical
compatibility and their theoretic correctness. To say that the reality of spacetime
is not exactly what happens in front of our senses and that we are used to see
and express everyday.
Even if art doesn't want to find the foundation of the world, because this is
not in his epistemic status and this result belongs to the purpose of hard sciences,
physics for example, nevertheless art carries out the world as a fundament.
That's its vocation. That's its destiny.
And if the reality of spacetime gives up as foundation, so to say as the condition
of possible apparition of any possible apparition, should art be excluded from
this query on the foundation? No, centairly. That would be impossible. Great
narrations of aesthetics would never stop to question everything, even better,
on the everything, because the specific task of art is aesthetic query to the
very limit of possibility. Since ever.
Conclusion and question: if reality, the reality of spacetime, is possible to
be described in the physic-mathematic sciences by an idea of a very complex
space multi-dimensionality that escape any visibility and any chance of daily
visibility, Who can see these possible concepts of space that are the real space
described by science if not an aesthetical experience that found its foundation
on the artistic praxis right on this lyrical query on the nature of spacetime?
If a tree falls in the moon without anybody near it, will it make sound? Take a look on the essay "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" and think it over.
Sound is by definition pressure waves propagating through a gas. So sound can exist on Earth, or on Mars, but cannot exist on the Moon or in space. On the other hand, "sound" depends on a human apparatus to be perceived as such.
To extend this simple example for hearing and sound to the case time and space, let`s take a look on what Critique of the Pure Reason all about:
The most read and most influential book of Kant is the "Critique of Pure Reason ', 1781, resulting in a remarkably simple thought experiment. He said, try to imagine something that exists outside of time and has no extension in space. The human mind can not produce such an idea. Time and space are fundamental forms of perception that exist as innate structures of mind. Nothing can be perceived except through these forms, and the physical limits are the limits of the fundamental structure of the mind.