Analogies between Sciences and Arts

Generative Art, by its very nature, is intimately connected to the concept of analogy. Artistic creations obtained in some processes with originally a different motivation, and, in combination with alternative, technical or scientific purposes, involve a special relation that is at least a duality, or possibly a set of connections among more than two components. Such a duality, or a multiplicity, by itself, is an analogy, possibly, a rather complex analogy. Focusing on the case of duality, when a technical-artistic creation may affect us in two main ways: providing us with a, perhaps originally unintended, artistic experience, on the one hand, but also serving another, a technical or scientific usefulness, these two effects can be strongly analogous, as, for example, many chemistry-connected experiences show.
In an even broader sense, Generative Art provides a strong analogy with another duality: a duality present in human culture between the technical, scientific basis, and the artistic, more spiritual, and emotion-provoking aspects of culture. As history, especially, the history of the past 500 years demonstrates, the technical (scientific) basis, and the artful, conceptual benefits of culture are especially strongly intertwined, and this is well represented by Generative Art, as many scientific advances, among them many chemistry examples can richly demonstrate.

On the technical side, it is enough to think of the scientific inventions and technical advances of humanity in the last 500 years, such as the electric power, steam engine, steam boats, trains, cars, paved roads, the chemistry basis of hygiene, concrete buildings, radio, antibiotics, the giant field of pharmaceutical chemistry, the ballpoint pen, the contact lenses, washing machine, telephone, laser, computers, internet, mobile phones, etc., etc., etc. All these history-changing inventions, with major influences on almost every minute of our lives today, are taken for granted by much of the world’s population today, as very few people ever think of the actual value and importance of those inventions, and to the often heroic efforts leading to them.
However, if just for one week, all of humans on the planet would be forced to live without all of those inventions, a lifestyle that is not even that remote from us in time, just living a life of our ancestors, of, say, only 500 years ago, then the appreciation for the true value of these inventions would become more in line with their true value. It is perhaps sufficient to point out one overwhelming fact: in those parts of the world, where many of those inventions have become used by the general public, the average life expectancy (and, of course, the average number of years devoted to complaining ..…) have increased in the past 500 years in a truly spectacular way.
We seldom think of this overwhelming fact, and on very few occasions do we think with reverence to the inventors, for example, to the memory of Michael Faraday, the discoverer of electric induction, the very basis of all the electric motors, used, for example, just to bring the point home, in most of today’s vacuum cleaners and washing machines, among millions of other applications.
I must confess too, that usually I also prefer to think of a painting of Monet or Kandinsky, or a poem of Apollinaire, ….. or Attila Jozsef, a Hungarian poet, and I seldom think of Michael Faraday, although, his wittiness, almost artful wittiness, may also be appreciated.
A good example is the conversation, when a British government official visited the lab of Michael Faraday, who was demonstrating to the public a new “miracle”, a real “magic miracle” of the time, generating a motion at the far end of the room, without actually moving anything across !!!
This could have been regarded sorcery just hundred years earlier: Faraday was moving a magnet back-and-forth into a coil of wire in one end of a room, that generated an electric current, that in turn magnetized a piece of iron at the far end of the room, that started to move another piece of iron! Magic! Motion has been created, without anything moving across the room (except, electrons in the wire, but even Faraday did not know that at the time.)
Well, the government official asked, something like “dr. Faraday, this is interesting, but what is this good for?” Faraday replied: “I know not, Sir, but one day you will TAX it ! “
Well, he was right: today, a large part of humanity, billions of people are using such generated electric current, some of us almost every second of our life, …. well taxed by governments …..

But, electric current is also used in producing art, not only through extending our days by electric light, so a painter can paint in the middle of the night, without risking to burn down the studio by tipping a candle, but also by powering computers, running scientific software, such as those for quantum-chemical molecular modelling when designing, for example, new pharmaceuticals for medicine. Some of these quantum-chemical computations may even provide some artistic impressions. Of course, it is also common today to use computers with the direct purpose of generating artistic images …..
Today, with the availability of all those inventions, specifically, with the availability of electronic computers, there are far more possibilities to combine, and, perhaps even unite the scientific, inventive, and artistic aspects of human culture.

The example in the associated video is two of the actually, quantum-chemically proven stable shapes of the electron density clouds of the common alcohol molecule, represented by surfaces made by those points of this “cloud”, where the density of his cloud is the same constant value, just like lines of the “constant height-level representations” of mountains on two dimensional maps. Here, of course, these clouds are in 3 dimensions, so we are dealing not with lines, as in the case of mountains, but by surfaces, along which the density of the cloud is constant.
Well, some of these shapes are suggestive to the imagination, they might bring up the association, in fact, the shape-analogy, with two dogs, becoming interested in one-another.
What could be ever more art-inducing, than the thought of love, as many of the greatest artistic creations of humanity demonstrate. Well, in this case, the artistic merit should not be exaggerated ….. this example is only about two dogs, perhaps falling in love, triggered by the quantum chemical computation determining the two most energetically stable shapes of the common alcohol molecule.

Still, to the eyes of a biased chemist, such models may provide a strong analogy between computational molecular modelling, and ideas which may remind one some forms of art.

Of course, one may bring up many-many other examples, from very different fields of science. Some of the, perhaps even unintended, artistic aspects of some of the manifestations of the technical and scientific results and advances, as they are promoted by Generative Art, can provide a gentle reminder, that by keeping in mind all those analogies, perhaps we may achieve a more balanced view of the value-system of our cultural achievements, in both the sciences and humanities.