Better Science Through Art

Richard P. Gabriel
Kevin J. Sullivan

Dream Songs, Inc.

University of Virginia U

Better Science Through Art

Only mystery enables us to live.

–Federico Garcia Lorca

Only mystery enables us to live.

Only mystery.

–Federico Garcia Lorca

Prefrontal lightningbolt too lazy to chew the sphinx's loudest eyelash
Not even if it shushes you with a mast of sneers
Down which grateful bankvault-doors scamper
Because of a doublejointedness that glows in the dark
Like a soliloquy of walnuts
Numbed by beaks of headless measuringtape
So the lubriciousness can tower in peace
Like a buzzsaw trapped in a perfumery of shrugs
Lemon
Or lime
Only a maze can remember your hair of buttered blowguns

–Bill Knott, Nights of Naomi

Φ;∆ T okΦ ; ∆;Γ e∈S
Φ; ∆;Γ x ∈ Γ(x) [GT-Var] [GT-Cast]
Φ; ∆;Γ (T)e ∈ T

Φ T includes init(S)
Φ; ∆;Γ e ∈ S Φ;∆ T ok
[GT-New]
Φ; ∆;Γ new T(e) ∈ T annotate [e :: S]

fields(N) = T f
Φ; ∆;Γ e ∈ T ∆ T <: N
∆ P <: N and fi ∈ fields(P) implies P = N
[GT-Field]
Φ; ∆;Γ e.fi ∈ Ti annotate [e :: N]

Φ;∆ T okΦ ; ∆;Γ e0 ∈ T0 Φ; ∆;Γ e∈R
mtype(m bound∆ (T0 )) = P.<X extends N with ¶I♦ S m(U x)
>
∆ T <: [X → T]N Φ T includes [X → T]¶I♦ ∆ R <: [X → T]U
[GT-Invk]
Φ; ∆;Γ e0 .m<T>(e) ∈ [X → T]S annotate [e0 ∈ P]

∆ R <: S Φ;∆ T ok Φ;∆ S ok
Φ T includes init(S) Φ; ∆;Γ e∈R
[GT-Ann-New]
Φ; ∆;Γ new T(e :: S) ∈ T

fields(N) = T f Φ;∆ N ok
Φ; ∆;Γ e∈T ∆ T <: N
[GT-Ann-Field]
Φ; ∆;Γ [e :: N].fi ∈ Ti

Φ;∆ T ok Φ; ∆;Γ e0 ∈ T0 Φ; ∆;Γ e∈R
mtype(m O) = P.<X extends N with ¶I♦ S m(U x)
>
∆ T <: [X → T]N Φ T includes [X → T]¶I♦ ∆ R <: [X → T]U
[GT-Ann-Invk]
Φ; ∆;Γ [e0 ◦ O].m<T>(e) ∈ [X → T]S

–Eric Allen, et al

void Step1() {

selectDrawing(firstDrawing);

if (isNewDrawing(firstDrawing))

writePoem(firstDrawing);

else

rewriteLessPoem(firstDrawing);

if (!oneLineLeft(firstDrawing))

Step2(firstDrawing);

}

void Step2(int currentDrawing) {

selectDrawing(++currentDrawing);

if (isNewDrawing(currentDrawing)) {

writePoem(currentDrawing);

Step1();

} else {

rewriteLessPoem(currentDrawing);

Step2(currentDrawing);

}

}

–Kevin Sullivan, Java implementation of Sanda’s process

Science: Traditional View

Scientists
create knowledge
study the world as it is
are trained in scientific method
use explicit knowledge
are thinkers

Engineering:
Traditional View

Engineers
apply that knowledge
seek to change the world
are trained in engineering method
use tacit knowledge
are doers

Art: Traditional View

Artists
create artifacts
study the world as it appears
are trained in a creational skill
use aesthetics
are doers

The “Cleanliness” of
Science
• The Demarcation Problem
• Positivism
• Elitist authoritarianism
• Epistemological
• Anarchism
• Inductivism
• Conventionalism
• Falsification
• Research programmes

Demarcation

Demarcation problem: When is one theory
better than another, where science is at one end
of the scale and pseudoscience at the other.

Positivism
Positivism: “the view that serious scientific inquiry
should not search for ultimate causes deriving
from some outside source but must confine itself
to the study of relations existing between facts
which are directly accessible to observation.”

Logical positivism: “Philosophy should provide
strict criteria for judging sentences true, false, [or]
meaningless.”

–Wikipedia

Elitist Authoritarianism

The idea that the demarcation problem is
for a jury of accepted scientists to judge;
that is, judge which work is scientific and
which isn’t.

Inductivism
• A statement is scientific only if it is provable
from facts
• Need to go from a fact (this is a computer)
to a proposition (“this is a computer”)
• Need to show that something true in a
particular set of spaces and times (inverse
square gravitation law) is true everywhere,
all the time

Probabilism

• A statement is scientific only if it can be
shown to be probable (and therefore one
scientific theory is “better” than another if it
is more probable).
• Because the universe is large, most
probabilities are small.

Conventionalism

• The idea that a scientific theory is a
convention or a means people agree to in
order to make certain calculations.
• Ptolemaic crystal spheres provide an
accurate predictive framework.
• Clumsy conventions (Ptolemy) are replaced
by simpler ones (Copernicus)

Falsification
• A statement is scientific if an experiment can
be stated that could falsify it.
• Suppose a statement requires a
measurement made by an instrument to be
falsified, then
• there needs to be a theory of how the instrument works
and what it measures (conventionalism)

• if the instrument provides a reason to throw out the
statement, then there needs to be a analysis of
whether there are potential disturbing factors (ceteris
paribus).

Falsification

At any given time, every theory has numerous
“anomalies” that are considered either the
result of “disturbing factors” or things to be
cleared up later.

That is, every theory is heavily patched.

Research Programmes

• A research programme is a series of
“progressive” theories; a theory is progressive
(over the last) when:
• it leads to new predictions
• none of its bold predictions are falsified
• it is not “patched” by ad hoc statements, but
instead retains its hard core and adjusts its
protective belt

Epistemological
Anarchism

• There are no demarcation lines.
• There is no such thing as progress, only
fashion.
• Anything goes.
• Science as propaganda.

Bruno Latour

• Scientific “fact” is determined by a jury.
• Science is the set of things constructed in a
laboratory.
• Scientists “vote” on what’s good science
through references.
• And lots of things I don’t understand.

Art & Engineering
Precede Science

...our testaments to physical work are so often
focused on the values such work exhibits rather
than on the thought it requires. It is a subtle but
pervasive omission....It is as though in our cultural
iconography we are given the muscled arm, sleeve
rolled tight against biceps, but no thought bright
behind eyes, no image that links hand and brain.

–Mike Rose, The Mind at Work

Art & Engineering
Precede Science

Skilled manual labor entails a systematic encounter
with the material world, precisely the kind of
encounter that gives rise to natural science. From
its earliest practice, craft knowledge has entailed
knowledge of the “ways” of one’s materials—that is,
knowledge of their nature, acquired through
disciplined perception.

–Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

Art & Engineering
Precede Science

...in areas of well-development craft practices,
technological developments typically preceded and
gave rise to advances in scientific understanding,
not vice versa.


Art & Engineering
Precede Science

The steam engine is a good example. It was
developed by mechanics who observed the
relations between volume, pressure, and
temperature. This was at a time when theoretical
scientists were tied to the caloric theory of heat,
which later turned out to be a conceptual dead end.


Science & Engineering:
Realistic View

Scientists Engineers
create knowledge create knowledge
are problem driven are problem driven
seek to understand and explain seek to understand and explain
design experiments to test theories design devices to test theories
prefer abstract knowledge prefer contingent knowledge
but rely on tacit knowledge but rely on tacit knowledge

Discovery
In the scientist’s house are many mansions....Outsiders often
regard science as a sober enterprise, but we who are inside see it
as the most romantic of all callings. Both views are right. The
romance adheres to the processes of scientific discovery, the
sobriety to the responsibility for verification.

Histories of science put the spotlight on discovery....The story of
scientific progress reaches its periodic climaxes at the moments of
discovery....In the philosophy of science, all the emphasis is on
verification, on how we can tell the true gold of scientific law from
the fool’s gold of untested fantasy. In fact, it is still the majority
view among philosophers of science that only verification is a
proper subject of inquiry, that nothing of philosophical interest can
be said about the process of discovery.
–Langley, Simon, Bradshaw, and Zytkow, Scientific Discovery

Discovery

...But we believe that science is also poetry, and—perhaps even
more heretical—that discovery has its reasons, as poetry does.
However romantic and heroic we find the moment of discovery, we
cannot believe either that the events leading up to that moment
are entirely random and chaotic or that they require genius that
can be understood only by congenial minds. We believe that
finding order in the world must itself be a process impregnated
with purpose and reason.

Art as Exploration &
Discovery
• Exploration: “some combination of premeditated
searching and undisciplined, perhaps only partly
conscious, rambling.” Defocused attention; flat associative
hierarchies.
• Exploration is assertive action in the face of uncertain
assumptions, often involving false starts, missteps, and
surprises.
• Discovery: “a reckless encounter with the unexpected.”
Focus; concentration; persistence. “If we persist [in
exploration], we discover.”
–Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination

• Understand: Only after discovery can the work
be properly structured, can the selection and
organization of the significant moments of time
take place.

If we attempt to map the world of a story before we
explore it, we are likely either to (a) prematurely limit our
exploration, so as to reduce the amount of material we
need to consider, or (b) explore at length but, recognizing
the impossibility of taking note of everything, and having
no sound basis for choosing what to include, arbitrarily
omit entire realms of information. The opportunities are
overwhelming.


Artistic Creation
Artistic creation is a voyage into the unknown. In our own
eyes, we are off the map. The excitement of potential
discovery is accompanied by anxiety, despair, caution,
perhaps, perhaps boldness, and, always, the risk of
failure. Failure can take the form of our becoming
hopelessly lost, or pointlessly lost, or not finding what we
came for (though that last is sometimes happily
accompanied by the discovery of something we didn’t
anticipate, couldn’t even imagine before we found it). We
strike out for what we believe to be uncharted waters,
only to find ourselves sailing in someone else’s bathtub.
Those are the days it seems there is nothing new to
discover but the limitations of our own experience and
understanding. –Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination

Artistic Creation

Some of the oldest stories we know, including creation
myths, were attempts to make sense of the world. Those
early storytellers invented answers to the mysteries all
around them. Why does the rain come? Why does it
stop? If a child is created by two adults, from where did
the first two adults originate? What is the earth like
beyond what we have seen, and beyond what the people
we know have seen? What lies beyond the stars?


Artistic Creation

Sometimes it’s very tempting to be satisfied with what’s
easy, particularly if people tell you it’s good....What’s
essential is to work without any preconception whatever,
without knowing in advance what the picture is going to
look like....It is very, very important to avoid all
preconception, to try to see only what exists...to translate
one’s sensation.

–Alberto Giacometti, on painting James Lord

Art:
Realistic View

Artists
create knowledge, language, alternative reality
are image or “piece” driven
seek to understand and explain
design devices to explore the world and the self
prefer contingent knowledge
but rely on tacit knowledge

Invented Languages

The 900 languages, over 900 years,
we do have evidence for suggest that
the urge to invent languages is as old
and persistent as language itself.

–Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages

Invented Languages

It is at least as old and persistent as the urge to
complain about language. The primary motivation
for inventing a new language has been to improve
upon natural language, to eliminate its design
flaws, or rather the flaws it has developed for lack
of conscious design. Looked at from an
engineering perspective, language is a kind of
disaster.


Advantages of Natural
Languages
...natural language and the messy qualities that
give it so much flexibility and power, and that make
it so much more than a simple communication
device. The ambiguity and lack of precision allow it
to serve as an instrument of thought formulation,
of experimentation and discovery. We don’t have
to know exactly what we mean before we speak;
we can figure it out as we go along. Or not.


Advantages of Natural
Languages

At the same time natural language still works as an
instrument of thought transmission, one that can
be made extremely precise and reliable when we
need it to be, or left loose and sloppy when we
can’t spare the time or effort.


void foo(int x[], int y, int z)
{
if (z > y + 1)
{
int a = x[y], b = y + 1, c = z;
while (b < c)
{
if (x[b] <= a) b++; else {
int d = x[b]; x[b] = x[--c];
x[c] = d;
}
}
int e = x[--b]; x[b] = x[y];
x[y] = e; foo(x, y, b);
foo(x, c, z);
}

void foo(int x[], int y, int z)
{
if (z > y + 1)
{
int a = x[y], b = y + 1, c = z;
while (b < c)
{
if (x[b] <= a) b++; else {
int d = x[b]; x[b] = x[--c];
x[c] = d;
}
}
int e = x[--b]; x[b] = x[y];
x[y] = e; foo(x, y, b);
foo(x, c, z);
}

and this does what?

void quicksort(int array[], int begin, int end)
{
if (end > begin + 1)
{
int pivot = array[begin],
l = begin + 1, r = end;
while (l < r)
{
if (array[l] <= pivot)
l++;
else
swap(&array[l], &array[--r]);
}
swap(&array[--l], &array[beg]);
sort(array, begin, l);
sort(array, r, end);
}
}

void quicksort(int array[], int begin, int end)
{
if (end > begin + 1)
{
int pivot = array[begin],
l = begin + 1, r = end;
while (l < r)
{
if (array[l] <= pivot)
l++;
else
swap(&array[l], &array[--r]);
}
swap(&array[--l], &array[beg]);
sort(array, begin, l);
sort(array, r, end);
}
}
add some art

better watchout
better !cry !pout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole > town

cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {be good}

better watchout
better !cry !pout
lpr why

cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {be good}

add a lot of art

Stopping by http://babelfish.altavista.com on a Snowy Evening
Here is a task whose outcome is certain:
Thinking of someone’s forest
and then thinking whether this forest is that someone’s.
And as for his house (I’ve picked this up):
it is certainly located in town.

I am stopped here paying attention to the snow above,
observing the trees filling in above the snow.
My eye finds comfort in this.

As for my horse, he strangely and narrowly stops.
I am small, me and the small end of the tree both agree.
To the horse, we are stopped between a farm and the frozen sea.
This evening is the strangest and the darkest of the year, the horse must think.

His harness bells are his only user interface.
These bells are installed to a flange by some wiring, and so
he gives the flange a shock, vibrating the wires,
thereby jolting the bells (giving them a restlessness)
in order to pose me a question:
Is there some kind of mistake here?
Surely a certain error exists.
He is a small horse.

There is only one other sound,
a different sound like a clay tone,
but only to the extent of a thin layer or a languid ribbon
forming a closed loop: the sweepback of a light breeze
over downy soft flakes—a simple, easy wind;
flakes like cotton wool or hair
or a rag for cleaning, which is the same thing.
Or maybe it sounds like this:
khlop!

(I am excited by this.)
Woods are attractive. Likable. Lovable, even.
Or sometimes—obscure. One of the trees
is dark and from a place which is deep.
And you know what they say: Dark and deep are deep.

But I am held to obligations which I must maintain.
Before I sleep I must resume my outward journey.
(And other unspecified things of the same class.)

There is only one other sound,
a different sound like a clay tone,
but only to the extent of a thin layer or a languid ribbon
forming a closed loop: the sweepback of a light breeze
over downy soft flakes—a simple, easy wind;
flakes like cotton wool or hair
or a rag for cleaning, which is the same thing.
Or maybe it sounds like this:
khlop!

(I am excited by this.)
Woods are attractive. Likable. Lovable, even.
Or sometimes—obscure. One of the trees
is dark and from a place which is deep.
And you know what they say: Dark and deep are deep.

But I am held to obligations which I must maintain.
Before I sleep I must resume my outward journey.
(And other unspecified things of the same class.)

–written with the use of translation-based defamiliarization

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.





–Robert Frost, New Hampshire



]



–Robert Frost, New Hampshire

Experimental vs
Conceptual

• This is a distinction like that between artistic
and scientific
• Or iterative versus waterfall

Experimental Artists

Artists who have produced experimental innovations have
been motivated by aesthetic criteria: they have aimed at
presenting visual perceptions. Their goals are imprecise, so
their procedure is tentative and incremental. The imprecision
of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have
succeeded, and their careers are consequently often
dominated by the pursuit of a single objective.

–David W. Galenson, Old Masters
and Young Geniuses

Conceptual Artists

In contrast, artists who have made conceptual innovations
have been motivated by the desire to communicate specific
ideas or emotions. Their goals for a particular work can
usually be stated precisely, before its production, either as a
desired image or a desired process for the work’s execution.
Conceptual artists consequently make detailed preparatory
sketches of plans for their paintings.

and Young Geniuses

Conceptual Artists

For conceptual artists, planning is the most important stage.
Before he begins working, the conceptual artist wants to
have a clear vision either of the completed work or of the
process that will produce it. Conceptual artists consequently
often make detailed preparatory sketches or other plans for a
painting. With the difficult decisions already made in the
planning stage, working and stopping are straightforward.
The artist executes the plan and stops when he has
completed it.

and Young Geniuses

Experimental Artists
For experimental artists, planning a painting is unimportant.
The subject selected might be simply a convenient object of
study, and frequently the artist returns to work on a motif he
has used in the past. Some experimental painters begin
without a specific subject in mind, preferring instead to let the
subject emerge as they work. Experimental painters rarely
make elaborate preparatory sketches. Their most important
decisions are made during the working stage. The artist
typically alternates between applying paint and examining
the emerging image; at each point, how he develops the
image depends on his reaction to what he sees.
and Young Geniuses

Conceptual Artists

...extreme practitioners...make all the decisions for a work
before beginning it. It is unclear, however, if this is literally
possible. There are artists who came close to it, and perhaps
achieved it, during the 1960s, by making plans for their work
and having these plans executed by others.

and Young Geniuses

Professional vs
Compulsive
Programmers
• Joseph Weizenbaum
• Computer Power and Human Reason
• 1976
• Eliza
• Weizenbaum hated Stallman

The ordinary [professional] programmer will...generally do
lengthy preparatory work, such as writing and flow diagramming,
before beginning work with the computer itself. His sessions with
the computer may be comparatively short. He may even let
others do the actual console work. He develops his program
slowly and systematically. When something doesn’t work, he
may spend considerable time away from the computer framing
careful hypotheses to account for the malfunction and designing
crucial experiments to test them....When he has finally
composed the program he set out to produce, he is able to
complete a sensible description of it and turn his attention to
other things.
–Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer
Power and Human Reason

The compulsive programmer is usually a superb
technician,...one how knows every detail of the computer he
works on, its peripheral equipment, the computer’s operating
system, etc....He can write small subsystem programs quickly,
that is, in one or two sessions of, say, 20 hours each....His main
interest...is in very large, very ambitious systems of programs....
[T]he systems he undertakes to build have very grandiose but
extremely imprecisely stated goals. Some examples...are: new
computer languages to facilitate man-machine communication; a
general system that can be taught to play any board game; a
system to make it easier for computer experts to write super-
systems.

The compulsive programmer...calls what he does “hacking.”...He
cannot set before himself a clearly defined long-term goal and a
plan for achieving it, for he has only technique, not knowledge.
He has nothing he can analyze or synthesize; in short, he has
nothing to form theories about....

(It has to be said that not all hackers are pathologically
compulsive programmers. Indeed, were it not for the often, in its
own terms, highly creative labor of people who proudly claim the
title “hacker,” few of today’s sophisticated computer time-sharing
systems, computer language translators, computer graphics
systems, etc., would exist.)


Concept Experiment
mathematicians
Craftspeople

Science Einstein
Darwin

Engineers

waterfall complexity science

Warhol 1970s hackers

Art Picasso Cézanne

agile?

more dimensions?

Concept Experiment

Science

Art Software
Project

more dimensions?

Concept Experiment

Science Software
Project

Art

more dimensions?

“Intellectuals” cannot
observe art in action
If you give a somewhat complex knot to an adult who
has developed all the relevant cognitive skills and
discipline, and ask them to undo it, they don’t jump into
action immediately. First they hold it carefully, turn it this
way and that, looking at the knot from each side, until
they understand the structure of the thing itself. Then a
plan begins to form: “if I loosen this strand, it will release
that one, and then I’ll be able to pass this through that
loop,” and so on. If they’ve understood the structure
correctly, and formed the plan based on that
understanding, then the knot falls apart, and is no more.

–Malcolm Sparrow, being wrong while talking about The
Character of Harms: Operational Challenges in Control

“Intellectuals” cannot
By contrast, if you give the same knot to a child who
hasn’t developed the same skills or mental habits, watch
what they do. They jump into action immediately. They
don’t pay such close attention to the structure of the
thing. They pull and tug and probably make things
worse.

–Malcolm Sparrow, being wrong while talking about The
Character of Harms: Operational Challenges in Control

How Knots are Really
Untied
Are you looking for an easier way to untie jammed-up
knots? Most people know the standard method of
looking for “ears” or “collars” of rope in the knot to shift.
What if you don't have that option, or it just isn’t
working? One other method is to quickly and firmly twist
the parts of the rope just outside the knot back and forth
as you push in slack.

How Knots are Really
Untied
• You don’t sit there analyzing the problem. You start
playing with it to see if there is an easy way.
• You begin to push back on the tight areas to loosen
their hold on the rope.
• You feel for what is moving, what is releasing.
• You make mistakes. One unwinding may only create
another knot.
• You persist.
• You keep pushing and pulling until you get a release.
• You use one release to get the next release.
• You continue until the knot is completely released.

Paul Cezanne

A Modern Olympia

Paul Cézanne

For him as I understand his work, the ultimate
synthesis of a design was never revealed in a
flash; rather he approached it with infinite
precautions, stalking it, as it were, now from one
point of view, now from another....For him the
synthesis was an asymptote toward which he was
forever approaching without ever quite reaching it;
it was a reality, incapable of complete realization.

–Roger Fry, Cézanne

Pablo Picasso

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Pablo Picasso

I can hardly understand the importance given to
the word “research” in connection with modern
painting. To find, is the thing....

When I paint my object is to show what I have
found, not what I am looking for....

I have never made trials or experiments.
Whenever I had something to say, I have said it in
the manner in which I have felt it ought to be said.

–Picasso, 1923 interview

Pablo Picasso cannot
During the winter 1906–7, he filled a series of
sketchbooks with the preparatory studies for Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon.... Historian William Rubin
estimated that Picasso made more than 400
studies for the Demoiselles, “a quantity of
preparatory work...without parallel, for a single
picture, in the entire history of art.” *

and Young Geniuses

* Rubin, Seckel, & Cousins,
“I have never made trials or experiments.”
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Three Modes of
Reasoning

• deduction
• induction
• abduction

Now, that the matter of no new truth can
come from induction or from deduction,
we have seen. It can only come from
abduction; and abduction is, after all,
nothing but guessing. We are therefore
bound to hope that, although the
possible explanations of our facts may
be strictly innumerable, yet our mind will
be able, in some finite number of
guesses, to guess the sole true
explanation of them.
–Charles Sanders Peirce
On the Logic of drawing History from Ancient Documents,
Especially from Testimonies

Deduction
Definition: a and b are factors of c if a·b=c. In this
case we say that c is composite.

Definition: P is prime if its only factors are 1 and P.

Theorem: There are an infinite number of primes.

Proof: Suppose not and Pn is the largest prime. Let
P1,…,Pn be all the primes up to and including Pn.
Consider….

Induction
From observing a number of occurrences of α
accompanied by occurrences of β in the right
circumstances, we can conclude (tentatively) that
α => β.

For example, if we continually see that every crow
we come across is black, we can conclude
(tentatively) that all crows are black, or that if x is a
crow, x is black.

Abduction
Being presented with a circumstance, β, which is a
sort of mystery, we guess that α could be its cause,
and so we take as a hypothersis that α => β.

This is the central “move” in science. We stare at a
situation in the world and guess a mechanism or a
law that would explain that situation, and there’s
our hypothesis, which we validate using deduction
and induction.

–Thomas TPunkt / Thomas Teufel

In science, the obvious role of imagination is in the context
of discovery. Unimaginative scientists don’t produce
radically new ideas. But even in science imagination plays
a role in justification too. Experiment and calculation
cannot do all its work. When mathematical models are
used to test a conjecture, choosing an appropriate model
may itself involve imagining how things would go if the
conjecture were true. Mathematicians typically justify their
fundamental axioms, in particular those of set theory, by
informal appeals to the imagination.

–Timothy Williamson, Reclaiming the Imagination, NYT 08/15/2010

Anything else is known as “guessing”
and is quite unscientific. –Mark McIntyre
spacebanter.com

Guessing is unscientific, unsafe,
and always wasteful. –Engineering Magazine,
Volume 37, 1909

Guessing is unscientific, and therefore has
no place in an engineer's method of working.
–Bulletin of the Taylor Society,
Volume 7, 1922

In general, we look for a new law by the
following process. First we guess it.
Then we compute the consequences of
the guess to see what would be implied
if this law that we guessed is right.

–Richard Feynman, A Life in Science

Can Art Improve
the Process of Science?

Until the Florida Department of Education places an
emphasis on art and music—the way it does with
math, reading, and science—the district will be
obligated to put money toward those essential
subjects and dedicate only the leftover resources to
the arts.

–Naples News 03/26/2010

Can Art Improve

Proulx, Travis; Heine, Steven J.
“Connections From Kafka: Exposure to
Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning
of an Artificial Grammar.” Psychological
Science. Vol. 20, No. 9. 2009.

Can Art Improve

Can Art Improve
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The strings of letters you just copied
contained a strict pattern. Some of the letter
strings below follow the same pattern. Some
of these letter strings do not. Please place a
check mark beside the letter strings you
believe follow the same pattern as the letter
strings you just copied.

Reading Kafka Improves
Implicit Learning

• 26% more accurate
• 33% more strings identified

Reading Kafka Improves
Implicit Learning

• 26% more accurate
• 33% more strings identified
From: "Debra Allbery" <da@warren-wilson.edu>
To: "Richard P. Gabriel" <rpg@dreamsongs.com>
Subject: Your MFA
I regret to inform you that your MFA from Warren
Wilson College has been withdrawn due to poor
post-graduation poetic performance.

Debra

Scientific Processes

Scientific processes, whether for product
development, manufacturing, or service
delivery, seek to minimize variances in
task execution through the imposition of
tight constraints, measurement systems,
and feedback control.

–Gabriel, Griswold, Notkin, & Sullivan, Hybrid
Art-Science Software Development
Processes, an unpublished (and
unpublishable) manauscript

Thousands of manufacturing companies have
achieved tremendous improvements in quality and
efficiency by copying the Toyota Production System,
which combines rigorous work standardization with
approaches such as just-in-time delivery of
components and the use of visual controls to highlight
deviations. Process standardization also has
permeated nearly every service industry, generating
impressive gains.
–Robert M. Hall & M. Eric Johnson,
When Should a Process be Art,
Not Science?

Artistic Processes
An artistic process is one that tolerates or even welcomes a
variety of inputs and works to produce the best (or at least an
acceptable) result given the inputs and the situations
encountered while executing the process. In particular, an artistic
process can adapt to very poorly stated requirements or even no
requirements at all aside from the production of something of
value. Artistic processes can endeavor to invent and blaze new
trails. In many cases the value of the outcome of an artistic
process will be determined only after the product has been
produced, though it’s often possible to make some judgments
along the way.
–Gabriel, Griswold, Notkin, & Sullivan, Hybrid
Art-Science Software Development
Processes, an unpublished (and
unpublishable) manuscript


The idea that some processes should be allowed to
vary flies in the face of the century-old movement
toward standardization. Process standardization is
taught to MBAs, embedded in Six Sigma programs,
and practiced by managers and consultants
worldwide.

–Robert M. Hall & M. Eric Johnson,
When Should a Process be Art,
Not Science?

Programmers’ Cycle

If we look closely at how software developers spend
their time, we see that they do these things in
sequence: {analyze–code–build–test}. First they figure
out how they are going to address a particular
problem, then they write code, then they do a build
and run the code to see if it indeed solves the
problem, and finally, they repeat the cycle. Many
times. This is how programmers work.

–Mary Poppendieck, Lean Design,
http://www.poppendieck.com/design.htm

Better Science Through Art

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