Back to Bartlett

One radical branch of philosophy would state that everything is matter, our thoughts too, that are defined by electronic states in our neurons. Other schools would say that all is in our minds, constructed on an individual or social level.
Let us take these viewpoints and look again at Bartlett's Cat/Owl proto-animal. First it is the drawing of an owl and finally it turns - after several generations of reproduction- into a more familiar animal, a cat. In between it is a sort of animal shaped blob, but it stays an animal.
It is fascinating for me.
Before I continue I have to go back to my University office and reread the experimental instructions, because I need to be sure about some details.
However, let us assume that all is in our heads. What keeps the drawing a picture of an animal? Was it Bartlett's instruction? Was it something inexplicable (scientists love such a question)? Was it some constraint of reality, some outer limit that confines our construction to certain borders of perception?
The owl could have turned into a house, a hammer or a plant.
Even without knowledge of the experimental instruction I will pose the following question: Is there always an experimentator who tells us what to do? (A Freudian über-ich or an alter or Bartlett himself)
Nevertheless, the truth somehow transcends the above-mentioned duality and in opposition to Descartes I would like to state: "As soon as I think, I am not."

Retro 7 Cannes

Day Seven Tuesday May 31

I am on another train between Vienna and Linz. I have just received the interview material from the two girls who have been hanging around room 50 in the Natural History Museum at the Synth-Ethic exhibition.

It is my second trip from Vienna to Linz since Saturday. The first trip was my return journey from Cannes Mandelieu in southern France, where I had attended at an ESF meeting of the EUROSYNBIO projects. My boss and I had arranged a World Café on societal issues and the communication of the synthetic biology projects.

My favourite presentation at the meeting was Cees Dekker’s investigations on cell division of bacteria under physical stress. 

In addition to nice scientific lectures and poster presentations I enjoyed the local atmosphere very much. On the first day I managed to visit the castle of Mary and Henry Clews at La Napoule. He did things like this.

More interestingly, there were several exhibits at the castle that showed hybrids of humans and animals. Mister Clews seemed to be a rather eccentric artist, a monarchist and a clear opponent of scientists, the establishment and of feminism. However his artwork, especially his later period is rather interesting.

From science to art let us get back to my ideas. When I studied Bartletts “Remembering” I came upon his serial reproduction of drawings of an owl that after several generations turned into a cat, which is the animal we are much more familiar with. The most fascinating stages of this process are the ones in the middle, where people draw some sort of proto-animal. This leads to the question of the core of information, similar to the core of social representations. Is there some kind of minimal information that transports the fact that it is the drawing of an animal and not just a spot of paint on a sheet of paper?

Could there be an analogy in other forms of communication?

Up to what stage does this proto information persist before it is turned into something new, more detailed or entirely different?

Maybe a closer look at the data of serial reproduction studies can shed light on these questions. 

While I travel peacefully between the capital of Austria and the capital of Upper Austria, some E.Coli strains haunt Germany and even more so they haunt the international media. The big advantage of all this seems to be that you can get fresh tomatoes, cucumber and other vegetables rather cheap.

The war in Libya rages on and I prepare to leave Europe for the first time in my life to go to Stanford for the Synthetic Biology 5.0 conference. Tomorrow I will need some meditation.

Visions of reciprocal lattices

One of my university teachers in christallography once said to me: "The reciprocal lattice does not exist. Keep that in mind when you do solid state chemistry. Otherwise you get crazy." That was true then. Nevertheless it somehow mimics how we see things, doesn't it. We have a spatial perception in which proximity makes things large and the infinite seems to lie within micrometers.
What a nice analogy anyway.
Maybe (:-)) physicists have discovered the utility of a reciprocal lattice only, so that we can see what the diffractometer can see, too (or the other way around?). However, there is a genius mind behind all that as is easy to see on Wikipedia.
Maybe one day reciprocal space and Fourier transformation can be introduced into sociological network analysis.
Neil Young would say: There is just one song

Retro 6 Leduc

Day Six Monday May 23 2011

Stéphane Leduc seems to be the scientist who coined the term Synthetic Biology in 1912. In some way his experiments and ideas are rather far from what biology does today. Today’s efforts in Synthetic Biology encompass DNA synthesis as technique, the development of a minimal organism by reducing the genes of existing organisnms (top-down approach), the creation of life from inorganic or simple organic pieces (protocell research/ bottom up approach) the design of artificial life using chemical components that are not part of natural organisms (Xenobiology/XNA research) and the arrangement of biological circuits following engineering principles with standardized parts. Nevertheless Leduc’s idea was more general, an attempt of introducing synthesis as a research principle into biology, which had been merely descriptive and analytical before that. In addition, he wanted to explore life by analogy, creating processes that imitate some aspects of life, like growth or movement. The latter aspects open up a wider perspective of research and can be inspiring for science, art and even philosophical discussions about the boundaries and properties of life.

The exhibit at the Synth-ethic exhibition by Roman Kirschner called “Roots” was inspired by such analogies and focuses on the metaphor of biological growth, though it contains inorganic matter and is powered by electrical currents.

Link: Roman Kirschner Roots at the Synth-ethic Exhibition Vienna 2011  Natural History Museum

An important analogy for me is the role of codes. We know about the genetic code formed by the nucleic acids guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine in the DNA and of guanine, adenine, cytosine and uracil in the RNA. In computer science we use a binary code of electrical charges, mathematics is open to several numerical or alphanumerical codes. We have human languages and writing, the codes systems of sign language and symbols. On another scientific level, we use the code of chemical elements to describe molecules or chemical systems and in physics we have elementary particles. What are the interactions of these codes? Are there connections and hierarchies, analogies and interactions? Which codes are manmade, to have a model for the functioning of nature? Which codes are natural, given and is there a universal code?

So I have just been to the library to get some inspiration and ended up reading books about the psychology of time and the occurrence of improbable events. Such is the fate of the scientist.