> >Natasha wrote:
> >Science and art - intellect and imagination - must be reintegrated for a
> >complex vision of the transhuman cultural landscape.
>
> This idea has some similarity to the Renaissance. Perhaps it is the
> Transhuman Renaissance.
Sounds like a good name. Yesterday I suddenly realized that I hear
practically *nobody* say what they will do after the millennium, or
what they think the world might be like. This is an open memetic
niche: let's present our idea of a transhuman renaissance as the
logical theme of the next century.
> Certainly many Transhumans could, or do, consider themselves
> "Renaissance entities."
I certainly do. I might not be a complete renaissance man yet, but I'm
definitely working in that direction and think it is an useful
personal goal. Why settle for anything less?
> I agree that intellect and imagination must be reintigrated. How do
> you propose that these two differening (but both useful) ways of
> perceiving (science and art) the universe be reintegrated?
I think the main problem is 1) a lack of understanding of each other,
2) a feeling they can't be combined (due to 1?). Today there are huge
deficits in education, creating people who doesn't know anything about
science and/or art (the worst thing is that there are a lot of people
in the 'and' group). We better find ways of motivating people to learn
more and more broadly.
As for 2, I find it rather revealing that at my research group (around
10 people) there are one guitarrist in a rock band, one synth player,
one organist and one professional pianist - at least among
computational neuroscientists there are artistic people - but they all
seem to be creating music in its traditional form (rock, church music,
modern classical music), not trying to combine their science with the
art. There seems to be a kind of taboo here, that one shouldn't put
science into art or art into science. I would like to see art that
express science and science that express art. This is why I look
forward to the Cajal space mission - Cajal showed that science can be
art.
I really hope I can turn some of my research into art one day.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y