[MUSIC PLAYING]
[BACKGROUND CHATTER]
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome Roger Penrose,
Susan Sontag, Edward O.
Wilson, and Alan Lightman.
[APPLAUSE]
LIGHTMAN: I'll sit here.
Welcome to our
evening discussion
of image and meaning.
I'm Alan Lightman of MIT, and
it is my pleasure and privilege
to be the host of
tonight's session.
In the history of
modern science,
a central measure
of progress has
been the degree
to which knowledge
can be expressed in numbers
and equations and concepts.
A ball takes 1.3 seconds to
fall a distance of 30 feet.
The electrical force
between two electrons
varies as the square of
the distance between them.
The energy of a closed
system is always the same.
To represent a concept
or a result in this form
has usually been considered
the most precise form
of understanding nature.
But knowledge can
also be presented
and misrepresented in
pictures and images.
Our minds and imaginations
react to these representations
in a different way than
to numbers and equations.
And here, we must remember that
we can objectify and distill
all that we want, but
meaning and understanding
must ultimately be
assigned by the human mind.
Image and meaning is really
a matter of human perception.
We're sitting here tonight
in one of the world's temples
of science and
technology, dedicated
to the study of physical
phenomena, atoms and molecules,
DNA, computers, galaxies.
But of all the wonderful
mysteries of nature,
nothing is more mysterious or
profound than the human mind.
Somehow, we are aware of
ourselves and our relationship
to the outside world.
Somehow, we think.
Somehow, we assign meaning to
the billions of sensory inputs
constantly flooding our brains.
Somehow, we create new ideas.
More specifically, in the
context of our gathering
tonight and our conference
topic of image and meaning,
I want to raise the
following four questions.
What role do images
and visualization
play in the creative process?
How do images change the way
that we think of ourselves?
How do images help
scientists in their research
beyond the help provided
by numerical data?
And finally, in what
ways do scientists
communicate their work?
In what ways do images
help scientists communicate
their work to non-scientists?
To stimulate our thought
tonight about these and related
questions, we have with us three
of the most interesting minds
of our time--
Roger Penrose, Susan Sontag,
and Edward O. Wilson.
Roger Penrose is a mathematician
and physicist at Oxford.
In the 1960s, Penrose proved
very general conditions
under which the universe had to
have originated in a big bang.
Penrose often uses pictures
and diagrams in his work.
He is renowned for his discovery
of Penrose tiles, which
are two geometric shapes
that can completely
cover an infinite plane without
ever repeating a pattern.
In his book The
Emperor's New Mind,
Penrose broadened his
interests to consider
the nature of thinking
and human consciousness.
Among his many
awards, Penrose has
won the Wolf Prize, which he
shared with Stephen Hawking
in 1988.
And I learned tonight that a
collection of Roger's drawings
will be shown in the Ruskin
School of Fine Arts at Oxford.
Susan Sontag is one of the great
literary and cultural voices
of America.
In both fiction
and nonfiction, she
explores topics ranging from
the American consciousness
and identity, to the
cultural and literary meaning
of illness, to the different
complexions of the narrative
voice in the modern novel.
Her nonfiction
includes such books
as Against Interpretation
and Other Essays,
Illness as Metaphor, and
Under the Sign of Saturn.
And her novels include
The Benefactor,
Death Kit, The Volcano Lover,
and, most recently, In America.
Sontag is a winner
of the National Book
Award and the National
Book Critics Circle Award,
and just recently, she has
won the prestigious Jerusalem
International Book Award.
Edward O. Wilson is an
evolutionary biologist
and zoologist at Harvard.
Wilson is equally famous for
his decades-long, detailed study
of the tiny ant and
his broad analyses
and theories about the
biological principles
that govern social behavior
and organization in all kinds
of animals, including us.
Some of Wilson's many books
include The Ants, On Human
Nature, and Sociobiology.
One of his most recent
books, Consilience,
concerns commonalities between
all forms of human knowledge.
Wilson, among his
other awards, has twice
won the Pulitzer Prize.
And I learned from
him tonight that he
is at work on another book on
what of all subjects but ants.
800 pages, including over 5,000
of his own drawings of ants.
I want to begin by
giving a brief summary
of the format for the evening.
We will start with a series of
six images, which you will all
see here on the
screen, and I hope
that our panelists can see
here pr by straining your neck
and looking backwards.
These are images
which have not been
shown before to our guests.
Each of our guests
will then speak
for 10 minutes, during
which he or she--
[LAUGHTER]
Is something happening?
OK.
All right, let me know
when something happens.
Each of our guests will then
speak for about 10 minutes,
in which he or she can either
give a spontaneous reaction
to the images, or address
the four questions that I
brought up earlier, or speak
on any topic that is relevant--
[LAUGHTER]
--to our conference.
Then, we'll have
about 20 minutes
of dialogue between the
three of them, in which
they can talk to each other.
I may insert a question or two.
And after that,
I'll open the floor
for questions and comments
for another half hour.
So, are you ready
to have some fun?
Good.
Well, let's begin
with the images.
Roger, can we start with you?
PENROSE: OK.
Well, let me comment
first on your images here.
I mean, the first
one, presumably,
is an atomic bomb
explosion, which
I take to represent the issue of
science and the responsibility
that one has in developing,
in this case, nuclear energy.
I'm certainly one of
those people who believes
that you can't really--
I mean, some people
think that science, OK,
that's a pure activity.
You can do it.
You don't have to worry about
the social consequences.
I mean, there's
something in me which
believes that, too, that
science is something that should
be done for its own sake.
But on the other hand,
it does seem to me
that the scientists, after
all, are the people who
have the best knowledge of
what their discoveries are
likely to do.
And so, therefore, they
do have a responsibility
to at least pay attention
to these issues.
So I'm certainly
one of these people
who believes that
you can't really
separate the pure science from
what potential applications
it might have and whether
they'll be useful for benefits
or otherwise.
Of course, scientists
are not always
very accurate in their
predictions in this way.
And I think there's some
famous quote from Rutherford,
who thought that nuclear
energy would never
be useful for anything.
So you can't always
believe what they say.
But on the other hand, they
are in a better position
than other people.
So the responsibility is there.
I take the second image to
be representative-- well,
it certainly is the Earth
rising from the moon.
And it does represent a
fantastic achievement,
a technological achievement.
Not so much as
scientific achievement,
although there is,
of course, that.
It goes back to Newton.
One appreciates
that space travel
was potentially possible.
But it's really a
technological achievement,
which required a great
deal of money and so on.
And I feel a great
thrill in this.
I was one of these people
who stayed up all night
when the first moon
landings came out and so on.
I think it's a great thing
that people can do this.
Of course, they're
not doing it now,
but maybe they'll
go to Mars one day.
And so I like that
kind of thing.
I think it's great.
But it is expensive,
of course, and one
has to worry about how these
things affect other research
which might be going on.
Here we have Crick and
Watson, and of course, this
was a fantastic thing
they did to discover
the structure of DNA, and it did
set off a tremendous revolution
in biology.
It probably represents a
number of other things,
because in a sense,
I seem to remember
from reading Watson's
book, or somewhere,
that they argued
how ignorant they
were of some of these things
at the time they were doing it.
And maybe it's a case
for not knowing too much.
Because if you
don't know too much
about what other
people are doing,
you can bring a new
perspective on a subject.
And maybe that's an
illustration of that.
It certainly was a wonderful
scientific achievement.
There's no question about that.
And we're going to see
further developments
from that in the Genome
Project and so on.
And then, again,
one has these issues
of social consequences, which
maybe will come up again
in one of the later images.
The development from-- well,
that's supposed to be a great--
showing how human
beings are somehow
the pinnacle of evolution.
Of course, there
are cartoons which
show these things going
opposite directions and so on,
and they start coming
back down again.
It's a wonderful image.
It may not be--
well, it also reflects,
somehow, that human beings are
part of animal life as
a whole and that there
isn't a dividing line between
the humans and other animals,
which I believe very strongly.
So that when one talks about
things like the human mind,
one is really
talking about mind,
and mind is not just human mind.
One has to think about animals.
It's something that
I worried about
with all this great business
with foot-and-mouth in the UK
and with all this tremendous
slaughter of cattle and so on.
And nobody ever mentioned
that, somehow, there were
any rights for the animals.
I mean, it was all to do with
what was economically the best
thing and so on and so forth.
And I didn't hear
a single person,
certainly not a politician,
mention that should we
think whether an infinite
number of animals
is equivalent to one
human or something.
Is that a fair equation?
It seemed to me that it goes
against the grain very much
with me.
Here, it looks like
a fetus, or maybe a
call it a baby at this
stage, in the womb, which
does raise certain issues
of the relation of science
to moral issues.
More or less, when does
life begin, and so on?
Well, I think it's a
difficult question.
I certainly don't believe
that one should regard
a few-week-old fetus as having--
I mean, think, there are
issues we don't know yet.
And this probably relates
to, perhaps, the next image,
too, which is the
question of a brain
and what's going
on in the brain.
And here we have imaging
of there is presumably
somebody thinking
about various things,
and where is it to be
pinpointed in the brain?
Of course, that doesn't
tell us a great deal
about what it is to have
an awareness of something.
So although it's a tremendous
achievement in science
to find out what goes on
where in different parts
of the brain, does
it really tell us
what it is that's going on when
somebody is aware of something,
of consciousness?
So I think there's a
great deal that science
is going to have to do before
we answer this question.
I'm certainly one
of these people--
I've written about
these things and get
into lots of trouble
with people sometimes.
But my general view
is that we simply
don't know yet what's
really going on, even
in a serious way.
We're going to have to
know more physics than we
do at the moment before we can
know what could be going on,
even, to evoke consciousness.
So the issue of
consciousness, then,
relates to the central, the
red one in the middle there.
And it's a question of when
does the fetus actually become
a person in the sense
of being conscious.
My guess is it's fairly early.
But I don't think it's
a matter of a few weeks.
I think you have to have a
significant looking thing,
but that's a guess.
The question is, we really
have to know these things.
So I would think a
baby in the womb,
if you could still
call it a baby,
then certainly it does have
some kind of consciousness.
I would guess this
from experiences
that I've had recently,
because my wife is--
I have a one-year-old child now.
And I remember the baby was
sensitive to music already,
I would say, about a
month before it was born.
So I think there
are things going
on there at that late stage.
But these are questions
which, at the moment,
we have no handle on.
And we're going to
have to understand
a lot more about what
consciousness is about
before we can really have
a handle on these issues
of the moral questions in
relation to unborn children
and so on.
Well, let's see, how many more
minutes do I have, if any?
LIGHTMAN: Three.
PENROSE: Three, OK.
Let me make a few comments
about some of the things
I've been seeing in the
conference up to this point.
I must say, I've found
it quite fascinating,
and I do think that there
are tremendous developments.
A lot of these have
to do with computers,
and others have to do
with ways in which people
can explore very small
objects and so on and very
distant objects and so on.
I did find the things
about the films last night
very moving, in some
ways, and very impressive.
But there are moral issues
which come up there.
And I think one has to
face up to these things.
One of these things,
I think, that
was today maybe about
the question of doctoring
photographs and so on.
I just wonder whether
there oughtn't
to be some sort of a law
which says that you can't
use a photograph and doctor it
without saying that you've done
and what you've done.
So it seems to me using
a photograph is fine,
but if it has been changed
in some way, that is illegal
unless you actually say
the change has been made.
And it seems to me,
I would very much
support some sort of
law of that nature.
It was just something
that occurred to me
when I was seeing these things.
Let me make one
slightly trivial point.
Frivolous, I was
going to say, point.
It's not frivolous, actually.
But one thing,
also, I was feeling
when I was noticing people
giving their talks here
was that there's some
respects in which
the developments in technology
are not really in advance.
And one of these, one of my
little bugbears, I'm afraid,
I've noticed that when I sit at
the back of a room and somebody
points at something with
this wonderful laser pointer,
I simply can't see a thing.
He says, this thing over here.
What?
And maybe by the time--
if he's held it on the same
point for five minutes,
maybe I would see it.
But a good old stick we used
to have pointing at something,
yeah, that's fine.
LIGHTMAN: One minute.
PENROSE: It just seems
to me that sometimes
technology, just by itself,
is not necessarily an advance.
Other times, it is.
One can't tell,
but one certainly
has to take on what
the advantages are.
But not just because it's new.
I don't think one
should necessarily
be driven in that direction.
Were there any other
points I should make?
Yes.
I guess I should
make this point,
that, I mean, visual
images I don't regard
as something
fundamentally different
from other means
of communication.
It's just that it's a way in
which you convey understanding,
often, very rapidly,
which depends
on the subject, of course.
But sometimes you can do this.
Sometimes, words, you
need a lot more of them.
Sometimes the image is
pretty incomprehensible.
You need to describe it.
But it is a very powerful thing.
And I think with technology
that's been coming up,
it's something which will
increase in its importance.
And I like that, because
I like visual images.
But as technology
develops, there
is a slightly negative
element, which perhaps I
would like to bring up, which
is the ease of communication
isn't always a positive thing.
Because it does mean
that fashionable ideas
spread the globe
almost instantaneously.
Whereas, in the good,
old days-- here's
where I want to go back
to some things which I
like about the good, old days.
You had these pockets
of people working away
at different things, and
there was a kind of--
people didn't have to do what
everybody else was doing.
Whereas, with the
internet-- internet is fine.
And it's great that people
in, say, developing countries
can see what's going on in
other countries and so on
without having to buy the
journals and things like that.
OK.
And international cooperation
and so on is great.
But on the other hand,
there is a downside, which
means that fashionable
ideas sometimes
have a much greater hold,
I think, in modern science
than they did before
communication was so easy.
So I think that's something that
one has to face up to and maybe
see how one could move
things in a way which
increases the possibility of
having more variety in what
they do.
So I'd just make that comment.
LIGHTMAN: Thank you.
We'll let Susan speak now.
SONTAG: Well, there are a very
large and wonderful subjects
on the table, such as the
role of visual information
or visualizing in
the creative process
and what it means to
represent knowledge visually,
which I presume in
the word represent
is entailed, also, the notion
of communicating knowledge
and how visualizing and
visual representation
aids in the pedagogic
process, for instance.
Those are very important issues.
But I think I will
wait for a moment
and just address these
fascinating images.
I guess the first
thing I would say
is that what strikes
me about these images,
and Roger Penrose,
in a way, responded
to what I think is at the heart
of this particular display
of six images, is he took
them as representative.
He was invited, we're all
invited, to respond to them.
But to say that
they're representative
is not the only way
of responding to them.
But what he did
was to say, well,
that image of the atom
bomb or the hydrogen bomb,
whatever it is, reminds
us of the ethical issues
in certain kinds of scientific
and technological work.
The image of the Earth
seen from the moon
reminds us or suggests
questions about space travel.
Crick and Watson,
let's say, remind us
of the glories of
scientific achievement,
et cetera, et cetera.
Each of them are taken
as representative
of a thought, a problem,
a task, a confluence.
I'm rather suspicious of this
way of thinking about images.
I think it's more
and more foisted
on us by our televisual
culture, but I
think it's actually a
rather shallow approach
to thinking about images.
I'm not saying you are shallow.
I'm saying that this
display encourages--
please understand me.
This display
precisely encourages
that way of looking at images.
I'm not talking
about the response,
because I think it's so
it's a very normal response.
But you put images which are,
in fact, famous images-- no,
please, bear with me.
These are famous images.
These are celebrity images.
These are images
chosen for the fact
that even I, a
scientific illiterate,
know what all of
those images are.
I recognize them.
Very few people in this space
are as ignorant of science
as I am, but I recognize
all six of these images.
I know exactly what
is being shown there.
So they are chosen precisely
because they're representative,
precisely because they are,
as it were, celebrity images.
Or let me put it
even more bluntly.
They are the visual
equivalent of sound bites.
I think this is
not a very good way
into the question of images.
I think it encourages
thinking about images
in a way that takes us
away from real knowledge.
I mean, there is, after all, I
think an argument for saying--
a case, rather, to be
made out for the argument
that we really don't understand
very much through images.
Images are, at best, only
aids, and they always
are in a particular context.
The context of these
images is that we're
having a conversation,
and this is
a way of introducing
the conversation.
But my first reaction was,
oh, those famous images.
And as Alan Lightman
told you, we
weren't told what the
images were going to be,
and they were kind
of a surprise.
And when they came up,
I thought, oh, shit,
those images.
I know those images.
I thought they were going to be
more interesting, more weird.
The only one that seems
genuinely weird is
the so-called fetus,
which could be--
maybe I'm too much
of a movie goer--
the Starchild in 2001.
I'm not 100% convinced--
although if Alan tells me
it is-- that it's a real fetus.
But anyway, Stanley Kubrick
and his art director
Douglas Trumbull made
an imitation of that,
if those of you know that
great movie of Stanley Kubrick.
It ends with, indeed, a
version of that image.
So we're not only in
an era of celebrity
and an era of televisual
reality, which
is so compelling for people,
we're in an era of celebrity
images, in which
certain images, then,
are taken as representative.
They trigger responses
where we say, OK, this
is a subject of debate.
And everything
that Roger Penrose
said about how we could think
about these problems-- they
are real problems.
What I'm questioning
is, more and more,
a kind of short
circuiting of the long,
laborious process
that is conducted
in words and in argument.
As if, really, we understand--
I think what's suggested
is that we understand more
from images than we really do.
My own view is--
except, again, thinking
of these 5,000 images
of ants in 800 pages of text.
I'm sure these are
incredibly informative,
but they are in a context.
I think images, obviously,
always appear in a context.
And the way we think about
images is contextually driven.
So I suppose the first
thing I want to say,
as perverse as it may
seem, is that the context
of these images is
this discussion.
And it's completely
adventitious.
It's, in a way,
completely false.
In fact, these images have
nothing to do with each other.
And this use of images,
I think, tends--
images in series, famous
images, celebrity images.
In how many contexts--
magazines, books, television,
et cetera--
are we invited to
recognize the image?
In fact, if you go
to a movie theater
now, after you start
munching on the popcorn
and before the ads and
the trailers start,
you may get a lot of images.
And then you're
invited to recognize
what movie this is from or
what actor is represented.
So I'm a little worried about
the extent to which we take
images as telling us very much.
My feeling is more we
remember through images,
but we understand through words.
And I'm not sure how much we
understand outside of context
supplied by
preexistent assumptions
by argument that can
be expressed in words.
I don't think the images are
telling us really anything
at all.
They are very often a
form of entertainment.
Now, they are
entertaining, and even more
than that, they give pleasure.
Images give pleasure.
They don't only
give information.
They give pleasure.
There's also another thing
to be said, obviously.
It's so obvious that you feel
you don't have to say it,
and yet, I think
it is worth saying.
These are all photographs,
and obviously, that is not
the only form of image making.
And far from the only
form of image making
which is instructive
or useful, I
should imagine, in
scientific work.
So I'm not so sure what
images are standing
for except as this
kind of shorthand,
or what I call the
visual sound bite.
Yes, it's true, and if
it's a famous image,
we'll have some
associations with it,
and we'll have associations
about particular problems.
But I don't think
we know very much.
And I don't think,
except insofar
as any image can be an object
of reverie, an incitement
to dream, to fantasize,
that the image
is telling us anything at all.
And also, images identify
things that we think
we should be thinking about.
I've been I've been
thinking a lot about the use
of photography in alerting us
to catastrophe and disaster
and giving us a sense of
war and what goes on in war.
And there's, of course,
a very long history
of this that goes back, in
photography, to, let's say,
the Crimean War, which
is the first war that
had any real coverage
by photography.
And what's interesting is
what wars we know about
through photography
and what wars
we are much less aware
of because we don't
have photographic
evidence of them,
photographic witness of them.
So photographic knowledge
identifies, defines,
makes memorable, and it also
excludes lots of other things
that we should-- it not
only points us to things
we should be thinking about.
In fact, the repertoire
of famous images
obscures, occludes, and
hides, I think, at least
as many, probably more,
issues than the ones
that it draws to our attention.
LIGHTMAN: Well, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Ed?
WILSON: Well, now, ants having
crawled into the discussion,
I would like to use
them to first show
the use, at least in
science, of images
in the context of creative
work and basic research.
It's true that I am just
completing the monograph
of about 625 species of ants.
Some 335 of them
are new to science,
and they constitute about 20%
of all the known ant species
in the Western hemisphere.
Why am I doing that?
Well, let me explain.
And then I have personally
drawn the aspects
of their anatomy, appearance,
and diagnostic traits
with over 5,000 drawings.
This is part of the process of
addressing a group of organisms
that you love, that you
really care about and are
intellectually excited about.
But it's much more than that.
As you go into a
monograph of this kind,
you are living
within the subject.
You're looking at
all of the aspects
of the traits of the species.
You are drawing them yourself.
You're getting that
visual feedback.
In biology, especially,
we are focused on
and we are driven by images.
So we learn in detail,
and it goes deep
into our consciousness.
And then, part of this is
collecting these creatures
in the field, of getting the
sense of where they live,
entering the actual
habitats and looking
at their ecology
and their behavior.
You learn more and more.
And this, then,
helps us illustrate
what I perceive as the two
strategies of doing research
in biology.
First is-- well, lets call
it two types of biologists,
to be a stereotypical about it.
The first type
addresses a problem
and knows that for every
problem in biology,
there is an organism ideally
suited to its solution.
So that's bacteria
for molecular genetic.
The other loves the
organism, wishes
to find out everything
he can about it,
and recognizes that
for every organism,
there is a problem to the
solution of which it is ideally
suited.
And that is how I address ants.
Now let me go back in time
to the start of my career.
I've just graduated from
Harvard, a PhD, 1955,
and I'm in the South Pacific,
in New Guinea and the islands
of the South Pacific.
And I'm doing this kind of study
then, totally absorbed in it,
and the habitats in
which they lived.
And I am thus coming
intimately to know
hundreds of species of ants.
And out of this, I'm
finding patterns.
The evolutionary biologist
is a typical example
of the person who
goes to the organism
and derives the solution of
problems to which it's ideally
suited and often perceives
the problem, what
it is, in the first
place, because we're
looking for pattern.
And out of this work,
I see two things.
I see the patterns in which
the species are flowing out
of the Indo-Australian
staging areas
into New Guinea and the
outer islands of Melanesia.
Just flow.
And I see the circumstances
under which species
can spread most
readily, and I develop
a broad picture of that.
And the second
thing that I see is
that there's a very
regular relationship
between the number of
species on the island
and the area of the island.
And out of this, to make a long
story short, later, I come back
and I collaborate with a
young mathematical ecologist
named Robert MacArthur.
And we developed a theory of
island biogeography, which
is an equilibrium theory of
species in which it leads us
into the concept and the
processes of immigration
and extinction and so on and
connects it with ecology.
Now, let me, having said that--
and mentioning that many,
many discoveries in biology
are made this way, by solving
problems that were never
dreamed of until you learn
to live with the organism,
to move to--
how much time have I?
LIGHTMAN: You've got
about five minutes.
WILSON: Five minutes.
To move to the image
of the Earth rise.
And what do I see when I look
at that distant planet, Susan?
What I do, first of all, because
I'm a biogeographer by nature,
the first thing
automatically I do
when I see these distant
photographs, I say,
how do the continents look?
And are those maps we've
been using accurate?
At last, we can find out.
And then, of course, I see
it as the astronauts see it.
I see it as a distant
and fragile planet.
And then I say, but what
do we mean by fragile?
It's not fragile.
What's fragile is the biosphere.
The biosphere is that layer
of multitudinous organisms
that envelops it pole to pole
and on which our lives depend.
And that biosphere,
an astronomical number
of organisms of some 10
million species, perhaps,
creates a disequilibrium.
It's an atmosphere and
a temperature regime
which is out of
equilibrium from what
it would be if the organisms
were not there driving it
to a new point.
And that's terribly fragile.
You look at that and you
tried to see the biosphere.
You cannot.
You can't even see it
from a space shuttle.
It's razor thin.
It cannot be seen with
the naked eye edgewise.
And we now know, from
many lines of evidence,
that we are disturbing
the biosphere
in a way that is almost
unprecedented, at least
in recent geologic history.
And that we have become
a geological force.
So let's go to the progression
from Australopithecus
on the left there up
through the species of Homo
to Homo sapiens.
And Homo sapiens is
the great destroyer.
And incidentally,
an interesting fact
is that we've estimated that
at any given time on Earth,
there are about 1,000 trillion
individual ants alive.
And each ant weighs about one
millionth of a human being.
And that means that there
are approximately about
as much biomass of ants
as there are humans.
Now, this is really abnormal
for the following reason.
If all humans were to
disappear, everything
would come back to the
equilibrium, approximately,
and that planet would
be-- shall we say,
the biosphere would be safe
for the indefinite future.
But if all ants
were to disappear,
the terrestrial
ecosystems would collapse.
It would be a catastrophe,
and the whole thing
would be thrown out of kilter.
[APPLAUSE]
So out of our knowledge--
to conclude with something
of a rhetorical note--
that we have learned by all
of these painful methods
of the natural
sciences, in particular,
the studies of the
diversity of life,
has come the realization
that we've got to--
somehow, we've got to
settle down before we've
wrecked the planet.
LIGHTMAN: Thank you
[APPLAUSE]
Well, let's have some
back and forth now.
Any of you have--
WILSON: Why don't we
ask Susan, if I might?
Have either one of us
gotten close to what
she wants us to do with images?
SONTAG: I don't
want to be cranky,
but I just think that
these images are just
inviting us to free associate
about things that we
think of when we look at--
I mean, I look at that
image, you know, and I say,
it's a man.
It's not a woman.
Isn't it interesting?
It's a man.
[APPLAUSE]
Well, I belong to that half
of the human race that is not
likely to be represented in a
representative chart of, let's
say, human evolution.
Whereas, those of you
who are men probably
find it quite normal, just
as he stands for everybody,
but she is kind of weird
to stand for everybody.
Let's say I bring
that to that image.
But at the same time
that I do sincerely
notice that, that it is,
in fact, a male and not
a female, which could, after
all, just as easily illustrate
that evolution, I think it is,
to use a word that is both used
and withdrawn at
the same time, it's
kind of frivolous observation.
It's just an
association that I have
because of my particular
ethical sensibility, et cetera.
One I'm sure is shared by many
other people, needless to say.
But it is simply an association.
We could have associations
to all of these images.
But I'm not sure associations,
using images as a pretext
to associate and present what we
think or feel or want to argue,
is a very interesting
response to images.
Because this is precisely
a little, tiny anthology.
It's an anthology of famous
or easily recognizable images.
I think would be more
interesting to talk
about how the visual has
become so important for us.
Alan Lightman and I,
who are both novelists,
we're having a long discussion
in the middle of the afternoon
about the difference--
it's something that
preoccupies, I think,
reflective writers
of fiction very much,
the difference between
writing in the first person
and writing in the third person.
We could also have
a conversation
about the difference in
photographed images as opposed
to drawn images.
We could have a conversation
about the difference
between still images and moving
images, et cetera, et cetera.
Those, I think, would focus
us on how we think visually,
how we remember visually, the
way in which visualizing is
essential to the imagination.
And it's essential,
can become essential,
in pedagogy and understanding.
But simply to respond
to individual images,
I find, not getting very far to
the kinds of problems that are
really, I think, interesting.
PENROSE: I don't really
understand your point--
is this working--
about your objection
to these particular images.
I mean, in particular
that one, which actually
isn't a photograph, of course.
The one on the
left at the bottom.
SONTAG: No, it's
not a photograph.
You're quite right.
PENROSE: Which evoked
a response from you.
Fine.
I think that's the sort of
thing he was trying to do.
OK, these are images
which, in different ways,
can evoke responses from us.
And I think that's
something valuable.
SONTAG: No, my
objection is not--
my objection is that I did
think we were being invited
to reflect on the
role of the visual
in helping us to understand.
And therefore, I find
responses to individual images,
because they trigger
associations--
whether they're my associations
or your associations,
that's not the point--
not to take us very far.
PENROSE: What kind of
would you prefer to have?
What would you
have put up there?
SONTAG: Well,
perhaps which were--
WILSON: And what
would you understand?
SONTAG: Perhaps images which
all related to one subject.
Look, listen, we
have a precedent.
Let's talk very concretely.
Darwin writes a book called
The Expression of Emotions
in Man and Animals, and he uses
a bunch of photographs, which
are largely faked or staged.
And yet, he didn't think
that that was a useful thing.
And we're talking
about 1872, I believe
that book is, 1872, 1873.
It's an early example
of somebody thinking
that visual aids, in
particular photographed images,
would be helpful in
making clear a scientific
or a descriptive or
a taxonomic argument.
I mean, I find that
very interesting
that it happened that long ago.
We know, of course,
the Encyclopedia,
the great encyclopedic project
of the late 18th century,
had images.
Obviously, they were
drawn images and not
photographic images.
Anyway, I think that's
an interesting thing
to talk about.
For instance, here's an
obvious question and one
that troubles me, is
the rise of such images
and the frequency
with which they
occur in books and scientific
and historical works
a part of a kind
of democratization
of popularization
of knowledge or not?
Is the feeling that an argument
isn't compelling to people
unless it has a
visual accompaniment--
I mean, haven't
you all been struck
by the extent to which
pictures, news pictures,
have come onto the front
page of newspapers,
of newspapers which
didn't feature them?
The extent to which we now
view black and white pictures
as not appropriate
in newspapers,
but rather, that they should be
in color, et cetera, et cetera.
Why have we, more
and more, wanted
to accompany narratives--
political narratives,
scientific narratives,
descriptive accounts--
with visual information?
I think this has a sociological
and political aspect.
I don't know.
That's just the kind of thing
that I think about, anyway.
WILSON: May I suggest another
connection, a wholly different
direction that might help
illuminate this, that has
been yielded by neurobiology?
It's just a tentative
on the basis of one
set of experiments I know.
And that is arousal of the
brain, automatic arousal,
which you may not
even be conscious of.
It's a measure of the dampening
of the alpha wave, which
is a good proxy for--
well, actually, it's directly
connected with arousal.
And the experiments
seem to indicate
that if we were to turn each
one of these into abstract form
so that they weren't
recognizable images
in our ordinary lives
but make them abstract,
it's very likely that the fetus
would cause maximum arousal
and to be pretty close
to a spike in how
you were automatically aroused.
And that would be a figure
with about 20% redundancy.
And that's about the
amount of complexity
you see in that fetal diagram.
And that happens to
be where we settle
in a great deal of abstract art.
That may be a
coincidence, but that's
where Mondrian settled after
all his experimentation
and movement away
from literalism.
And it also is the
amount of complexity
you see in Asian pictographs
and in glyph characters
and in frieze design
and in coliforms.
And in fact, it's what
automatically we pay attention
to instantaneously more than
other degrees of complexity.
So it's just a thought.
In other words, what
does this tell us
about image and meaning?
I think it probably tells
us something important.
It certainly tells
us where what might
be a gravitational
force in the evolution
of our so-called
primitive art, design.
Is it about that 20%
redundancy level?
Just an observation.
PENROSE: I think you raised
a point which I don't think
has been-- at least,
I haven't seen
it discussed at this meeting.
The question of cartoons and
that sort of thing, where
you can convey an impression.
I mean, not photographic, but
with much less information,
if you like.
But nevertheless, you can
instantly recognize what it is.
And as you say,
with that image, you
could have done that
probably with a few lines.
WILSON: That's what we
call diagnostic traits
in systematics.
We use it in a field guides
like Peterson's field guide.
But there's another
aspect, too, I'd
like to mention that has come
out of the subject of ethology,
which is experimentation,
experimental natural behavior
study.
And that's a
supernormal stimulus.
I'm reminded of that by your
allusion to cartoonists.
Cartooning is a
substantial process,
the exaggeration of certain
features that release--
that is, stimulate us--
in a certain way.
Emotionally, perhaps,
through cultural mediation.
Sometimes automatically.
So we go for the
infant, for example.
You exaggerate the amount
that the nose is pushed in
and the eyes grow large
and the body of the head
is disproportionately
large for the infant's form
and the body and so on.
And when we present horrific
figures, either in horror films
or in our meaning to dramatize
the horrors of war and so on,
we use supernormal stimuli.
This means that in
certain stimuli,
certain categories of stimuli,
exaggerating the features
that you would find in a normal
context would-- from predators,
from children, for what
we consider beautiful men
or women.
By exaggerating them, you get
an even stronger response.
SONTAG: Don't you think, also,
that it has to do with framing?
I recently saw an exhibit
of war photography,
because I am very interested
in this right now.
I'm trying to write something.
In which you saw the
original photograph and then
you saw the
photograph as printed.
For instance, that
very famous photograph
from the Vietnam War,
probably the most famous
single photograph, of the
naked child running down
the highway toward the
camera who's been napalmed.
It's actually a
much larger image,
and I've seen the
original image.
And of course, it's shrunk so
that she's really in the center
so you can't miss her.
On the other hand, the larger
picture is also very upsetting,
because it shows quite
a few people, including
American soldiers--
mostly American
soldiers-- standing
on the side of the road not
paying any attention at all.
One is talking to another one.
And this child, who
must be screaming--
as well as there are other
children in the picture, too.
They're not paying
any attention.
But nevertheless, we
would look differently
if the picture-- and it would
have had a different impact.
So it's not just exaggeration.
But I think one can never ignore
framing, what is excluded,
and how information is
centered in a picture.
WILSON: Let me make a quick
allusion to that final image.
And that is where our cognitive
neuroscience may be leading us.
And that is that a
lot of these appear
to be fundamental traits,
the way the brain and the way
we respond to certain types of
stimuli, contexts, and so on.
A lot of that appears
to be programmed.
And how much it is and how much
can be culturally modified,
I think, is going to be
understood a great deal more
as time goes on with
the aid of techniques
like the one displayed here.
I just wanted to
mention that in passing.
And what that means
is I'm not sure,
but it certainly
does allude to the--
or is relevant to the general
topic of tonight, which
is the relation between
image and meaning.
LIGHTMAN: I wanted to ask
both of you a question that's
sort of perpendicular to Susan's
comment that a lot of images
are just celebrity
images and bring forth
a canned set of associations.
Both of you use
images in your work.
I mean, Ed, you
mentioned that you
are drawing 5,000 parts
of ants or whole ants.
And I know Roger,
among all physicists,
uses images to an
unusual degree--
geometric constructions,
which you must visualize.
How do these images
actually help you
in your scientific work--
the visualization, in your case,
Roger, and the actual drawing
by hand, in your case, Ed?
PENROSE: Well,
certainly, I find it
very useful in understanding
mathematical things.
I mean, in my notebooks, I
tend to draw lots of pictures,
far more than I would
actually have calculations.
Once a problem is
reduced to a calculation,
I feel it's almost
solved, because then you
can just write it down.
Whereas, it's the
conceptual ideas
which are very difficult to get
to grips with without having
some kind of visual image.
Often, it's very difficult
to have accurate images.
Even people who don't
think very visually--
there's a famous little
book by Hadamard,
where he writes on how
mathematicians think and so on.
And he describes his ideas, and
he has these blobs and things
like this.
And then he stands back and
thinks about it and says,
well, these blobs don't actually
have much information in them.
And he regards himself as
not on the visual side.
He's a sort of
analytical thinker.
So these images
are very important
for mathematical thinking.
I think Keith Devlin, whose talk
yesterday brought up this issue
that bringing up visual
images in actual mathematical
demonstrations for
other mathematicians
is often regarded as
being kind of inferior.
And you should try to
get rid of the diagrams.
You can do them for
your own purposes.
But when you want to
make an honest article,
you don't put them in.
I think that things have moved
away from that, to some degree.
The pendulum swings
one way and the other.
And I think images are
used quite a bit more
in very advanced mathematical
articles sometimes.
It depends on the subject.
The problem with
these visual images
is how to make them rigorous.
And mathematicians want to make
sure the arguments actually
hang together in
a very strict way.
And the images may be thought
be distracting from that.
But I think in the
exploratory thinking,
they're absolutely vital.
I found them vital.
I don't know to what
degree other people who
work in mathematics find this--
probably less, because I happen
to be on the visual side.
That's just in
one's own thinking.
But then, of course, in
explaining to other people,
they are extremely important.
It's quite curious that
in mathematics teaching,
you will often find that
mathematic students find
the diagrams not very helpful.
And I think there's a
curious reason for that.
And that is that there's a
kind of selection effect,
that it's very hard
to have examinations
which test the visual ability.
Whereas, to test the analytic
and calculation abilities,
that's easy.
And so the people who do well
on that side come through,
do well in the exams, and
you find a lot of them
in math classes.
Whereas maybe the best ones,
or the one who come through,
will be able to do things
on the visual side, too.
But you find that, on the whole,
the mathematics students--
at least, that's
been my experience--
are not at all visual.
Now, it's a curious thing,
because if somebody says to me,
OK, we want you to do
some public lecture
or something like this where
you can to talk to people
who are not mathematicians.
Lots and lots of pictures.
Lots of pictures, they say.
And that's the way you get
the ideas across to people
who are not mathematicians.
LIGHTMAN: It works
at the two extremes.
PENROSE: Yes.
I mean, I find they're
very important.
I think they are extremely
valuable in getting ideas
across to people who
are not mathematicians.
Probably more so than
with mathematicians.
But on the other
hand, I am somebody
who believes that they
have a very big value
within mathematics, too.
But for me, they're
absolutely essential.
LIGHTMAN: Do you feel like
you know your ants better
after drawing them?
WILSON: Oh, certainly.
You just gain that
much more familiarity
and then affix it
into your mind.
But watching Roger
using movements,
paralinguistic signaling--
and then the dinner
conversation,
trying to explain an important
principle of quantum mechanics
to a admittedly baffled
dinner companion.
It was very effectively
using objects
on the table to move around.
And I was reminded then
of the greater importance
of narrative motion and
kinesthetic involvement.
Kinesthetic.
You know, we are
not just creatures
of the ordinary
senses we think of.
We're also creatures
exquisitely adapted
to doing things,
especially with our hands,
and creating and producing
products and so on.
So this is very pleasing
to us, to use our hands
and to work with them.
And this is extremely
true of biologists
who work with whole organisms.
So yes, it's the kinesthetic
element, actually doing it--
PENROSE: That came up yesterday,
incidentally, with the--
sometimes, in the
architectural discussion,
with producing actual models
you can get your hands on.
WILSON: Exactly.
It's aesthetically pleasing.
It enhances learning, and it
certainly enhances creativity.
And I'd like to ask you
a question about that.
I've often wondered,
Stephen Hawking--
who I think was your
student, was he not?
PENROSE: No, he was--
WILSON: Well, that's what they--
PENROSE: He wasn't my student.
He was Dennis Sciama's student.
WILSON: Let's put it you
lead the way for some
of his own thinking.
But he has once said that being
able to do kinesthetics now,
he's glad he chose theoretical
physics, because it's
all in my head.
And I wondered, do
you have any sense
of how not being able to
write, move, do these things
but becoming purely
cerebral has maybe--
maybe I've got it wrong,
but how this might influence
his thinking or what
subjects he takes
or anything else to comment?
PENROSE: I mean, this
came on, of course,
during the course
of his research.
WILSON: Yes.
He's had a long history of
being able to use his body.
PENROSE: Well, he was
diagnosed, I think,
in his first year of
research, graduate work.
Dennis Sciama, who
was his supervisor,
was told that he
probably wouldn't live
the three years to do a PhD.
Well, that was proved wrong.
But I think Stephen
was very visual also.
I mean, he was good
on the analytic side,
but he was good on
the visual side.
So presumably, earlier,
he was able to have
a sort of feeling for things
in a tactile sense, as well.
But I think the
visual aspect of it
wouldn't have been
impaired by his condition.
But later on, he would do
work by getting a student,
and he would tell the student
what to put on the board.
So that might be a
diagram sometimes,
or it might be a calculation.
WILSON: Does it by a
surrogate, and he sort of still
does the visual.
I mean, the movement
and the kinesthetic.
PENROSE: That's right, but
the visual aspect of it
was certainly very important
in a lot of his thinking.
So I don't think that would have
been impaired by his condition.
The kinesthetic aspect,
yes, I can see that.
That must have been--
LIGHTMAN: Why don't
we, at this point,
open up the floor for
questions or comments?
And I think we may have
some microphones here.
So if you have a
question or a comment,
please come down
to the microphone.
And we'll just start right here.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Can you hear me?
OK.
I was interested in
Ms. Sontag's remarks,
and I sort of thought you
were going in a direction
that you didn't quite get to.
When you talk about these
as celebrity photographs,
I think the reason that
they're celebrity photographs
is because I think
they're so compelling.
And maybe that just makes me
as naive as John Q. Public.
I recognize all these, too,
but as I was watching them,
I was sort of saying, wow.
And what I'm struck by
really is the potential
for photographs like
these to lie, basically,
and to serve a primary
propaganda function.
So, for instance,
if you look at this,
what's remarkable about
this picture of the Earth,
of the Earth rising, is
that when you look at this,
you're suddenly struck by the
fact that 6 billion of us,
most days, see the
moon in the sky.
And none of us see it
the other way around.
And this picture here
shows us the opposite,
which is so out
of our experience
and yet taken, I
believe, by human beings.
That shows there's
been a tremendous shift
in our perspective
of the universe.
And frankly, I think it's
a wonderful add for NASA.
Because you look at this
and you say, my god.
You know, how can we not
give billions of dollars
to those people so we can
change our view of the universe?
This picture here,
Watson and Crick, it's
not a photograph
taken by Mrs. Watson.
It's not a snapshot
taken by Mrs. Watson.
It's a marvelous picture
with a classic composition.
You talked about the
framing of these,
but it's really the
composition of this picture,
the photograph, is what
makes it so remarkable.
It's very classic.
And Crick, the
movement of his body
is mirroring the movement
of the double helix here.
And what's so striking about
this is we've all seen,
probably, pictures of Goddard
standing next to his rocket.
Well, Goddard is all
dressed up in a suit.
His tie is very neat.
Everything's in place.
And he looks,
frankly, like a nerd.
Everybody's seen these pictures
from the '30s, I think.
There was recently
another one in the--
whereas, there's
something very fetching
about Watson and Crick.
Watson, I think that's
Watson on the left--
LIGHTMAN: I'm going to--
because we have a lot of
people wanting questions.
I'm sorry to--
AUDIENCE: Let me just one--
if you look at that
picture of the fetus--
[APPLAUSE]
LIGHTMAN: Let's
take one over here.
AUDIENCE: I hope I
don't go on that long.
I see this panel a little
bit as my daily life,
because we've got the scientists
on the right and the writers
on the left.
And I'm in the center,
because my job, for example,
coming to Science
magazine was to turn it
from what I'm going to show
you tomorrow, which some of you
remember, which was a totally
black and white-- had almost no
photos, no illustrations-- to
something you recognize today,
which has images for the purpose
that Susan worries about,
which is to try to make
our audience broader.
When I came, the audience
was getting older,
and young people were used to
a colorful Newsweek and Time
kind of universe.
And we knew that we weren't
going to have subscribers
if we stayed sort of like the
New England Journal of Medicine
is with its cover.
As you know, it just has tables
of contents on the cover.
So I think we live with this
interesting battle in our staff
all the time.
How much space should we give
to images versus how much space
do we need for our words?
And I thought it'd be just fun
to tell one story for the panel
and see if it relates
to this sort of thinking
that we have here.
I had one time come
to Newsweek, and one
of my first and most
important lessons
when I started working in
Newsweek was the following.
It was right at the second
most lively period--
the most lively period after
Watergate, when the Iran Contra
events were taking place.
And I learned what made a great
writer for Newsweek or Time
by the following.
I would meet people
in some months
after the first press conference
Reagan had-- you'll remember,
some of you.
After many months, when there
were no press conferences
because he was hiding,
worrying about what to say.
And I would meet people, and
they'd say, where do you work?
And I'd say, Newsweek.
And they'd say, oh, you know,
I really loved that story
that you guys did where that
guy wrote that sentence,
Ronald Reagan is
a tall man, but he
looked small behind
the podium last night
when he tried to explain
what was going on.
And I call that a word picture.
And the word picture
has the same function
as the images when
they're working right,
which is to be able
to teach people
a lesson in a very quick way.
And I think the contrast
between that important kind
of iconic way of doing
word pictures or image
pictures versus
the kind of thing
that Susan Sontag probably
is worrying about,
like the sort of Mao image,
or even the word image
that is like Mao propaganda
that entire populations stop
thinking about what's
behind them because that's
the image, to me, that's the
interesting debate that's
going on there in the panel.
And that's what I
wanted to mention.
Thanks.
LIGHTMAN: Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Let's go here.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I think that the images have
been misclassified, actually.
The bomb and the baby,
yes, they're images.
I think Watson and Crick
are illustrating a model.
And I also think that the
human evolution, that's
illustrating a model.
In other words, those two
images are getting across ideas.
And then, the moon and the
picture of the brain, that's
actually data.
So those observations we
then infer results from.
So I think you can too easily
dismiss all these images as
merely images.
LIGHTMAN: Thank you.
SONTAG: Can I just
say something?
I'm not trying to
dismiss these images.
I'm saying that there
is a problem in thinking
that images really speak to us.
I think it's more that
we're speaking to them.
That's what I'm saying.
Of course, these are
wonderful images.
One of my most
treasured books, if I
had to sort of pare my
inflated private library down
to a few hundred books,
I'm sure the NASA--
I have a big, big book
of NASA photographs
of things seen from the moon.
Includes that image.
I adore that image.
It's not that I
don't think these
are great images, most of them.
I just think there's a
problem in our using images
iconically, that they're
not really telling us.
We're telling them.
We're using them as
platforms for associations.
And that we have to
understand always that images
are seen in a context.
I'm not saying these aren't
good images or beautiful images
or exciting images.
And I'm not, certainly,
saying that they're not
famous for a reason.
They're famous for a reason
because several of them
are absolutely wonderful.
The question is, what
do they actually say?
Do they speak for themselves?
I think they speak very
little for themselves,
including Crick and Watson.
I don't think that's
telling you anything.
It's because we care about them
that we care about that image.
PENROSE: But wasn't the point of
them to stimulate conversation?
I thought that was the idea.
SONTAG: Well, it is, but
that's the conversation
that it stimulated in me.
It stimulated in me--
[APPLAUSE]
--the conversation that
there's a problem about dealing
with very well-known
images that we can
simply associate to
as opposed to images
that are more obscure or
more grouped, I think.
Grouped in the
sense of sequential.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Susan Sontag, I
enjoyed your comment
that these celebrity images
are the visual equivalent
of sound bites.
Thanks very much for
that memorable comment.
You also said, though, that
you worried that we're not
learning anything from
the images beyond what we
would from reading
narrative and text.
And you also implied--
you asked whether
images are actually
helping democratization,
even implying
that there's some sort
of tyranny of an image.
And I want to give
you a different image,
a different picture, of
how images aren't tyranny.
When I read a scientific
journal article
in my area of expertise, I
begin reading the article,
and as soon as I've
gotten the main idea,
I stop reading the
text and I turn
to whatever non-text material
the author has given me.
I turn to the tables,
the charts, the pictures,
perhaps the PET scans if
it's a neuroscience article.
And at that point, I'm not
reading the text anymore,
and I'm reading the images.
And anyone else do that?
I think I'm doing it, and I'd
like to get your reaction,
because I want the pleasure
and achievement of figuring out
the story for myself and coming
to my own interpretation.
Thank you.
LIGHTMAN: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
SONTAG: I guess I don't know,
really, how to respond to that.
First of all, I never
used the word tyranny
or any of those notions.
That's very much not
what I was saying.
But I guess I'm not so
interested in figuring things
out for myself.
I'm more interested in learning.
So I wouldn't say that
I would abandon a text
to look at the image, as
much as I am extremely visual
and spend a great deal of
time looking at images.
I mean, Alan Lightman
picked me up at the airport,
and we went to the museum
and looked at images
at the Boston Museum.
You have a great museum here.
I don't get to Boston more
than every two months or so,
and I go to a museum.
I live in a visual world.
I'm visually besotted.
I'm just saying I think
the question of what
we learn from images and what
kinds of images we learn from
and the very many different
contexts that we look at images
in is a critical question.
That's all.
I'm not talking about
images tyrannize over us
or anything like that.
There's so many different
uses for images.
WILSON: May I suggest that
much of what is being said
is missing the point.
If the aim is to somehow conjoin
science and the humanities,
the best of science and
the best of humanities--
in other words, what
you've been describing
is a kind of phenomenon.
You don't repeat
it over and over
again without the framework
and relevance and so on.
The question of interest,
a question of interest,
is, why do we respond this way?
Why do certain images
affect us a certain way?
Why does framing occur
at a certain degree?
Why do we select a certain
complexity of imagery
in art and photography?
If we can't answer
why, then we really
don't understand the
human condition very well.
And I suggest that where
science and humanities are
likely to come together
in this particular subject
is, in fact,
through neuroscience
and through the reconstruction
of human evolutionary history
pieced together with
the particularities
of cultural history.
And that then, knowing how
the brain is constructed
and programmed, what
our sensory biases are,
how we develop these
capacities and biases
and emotional responses, then
we will have a true theory
of, say, the arts.
LIGHTMAN: I noticed
from the audience,
we've been getting a lot
more comments than questions,
which is just fine.
Let's go here.
AUDIENCE: I believe
that vision and language
and abstract thinking
have common origins
in the physiology of vision
and thinking and language.
So the process of getting
meaning from image
through paying attention
and parsing and interpreting
and ultimately changing
our internal state
is substantially
similar to the process
of understanding a speech act
or understanding this thought
process.
So could you comment on that?
SONTAG: Yeah.
I certainly think--
as I said earlier,
I don't think there's a
fundamental difference.
I mean, the title of this
meeting is image and meaning.
The meaning is something which
is internal, if you'd like.
But it's not so different
from how one responds
to verbal or written words.
And again, there's
something down there.
There's some configuration
of words on the page,
and the meaning comes in
you when you read that.
And it's similar to an image.
I mean, the image may
convey some meaning to you,
which it isn't there, in a
sense, abstractly in the image.
It's something which is how
one responds to the image.
All I'm saying is I think I'm
agreeing with you, if that's
what you're saying, that there
isn't a fundamental difference
between how one responds
to a visual image
and how one responds
to words, say.
It's just different part
of the brain, for example,
and it has different
characteristics,
valuable in slightly
different ways.
AUDIENCE: And the
meaning would be
that we change the
distribution of propensities
to do things in the future.
PENROSE: Meaning's one of
these very difficult things
to come to terms with.
And I think it does
require consciousness.
I mean, something
can't mean anything
without being aware
of it, it seems to me.
I mean, that's why it's
a very difficult issue,
because it's things
that we don't
know much about at the moment.
I mean, my experience
comes largely
from things like
mathematics, where
one can see that it's
fundamentally important what
the meaning is behind
a set of symbols.
I mean, you can't
know whether something
is right or wrong, if you like,
without knowing what it means.
Just simply manipulating the
symbols isn't sufficient.
The meaning that
underlies those symbols
is often very important.
Sometimes you can get
away without the meaning,
but ultimately, you need to
know what these things mean.
And it must apply,
also, to visual images.
AUDIENCE: But
subliminal messages
may convey meaning
without awareness.
PENROSE: Well, I don't think so.
No, they could make
you do things, maybe,
or they could make you--
but I don't think
the meaning is there.
I think that's more a kind
of automatic response,
if they work.
I'm never quite sure
whether they do work.
But if they do, it's, as you
say, an unconscious thing.
That's the whole point.
But it's not really
there's any meaning that
gets through to you.
It's that you may feel
you like something
that you didn't like otherwise.
Maybe that's how it works.
But I don't see any actual
meaning there, really.
LIGHTMAN: Let's
move to a question
or a comment over here.
AUDIENCE: Yes,
thank you very much.
My name is Michael Charney.
I want to thank the panel
for allowing the audience
to participate in this
wonderful dialogue.
I'd like to say
that, by the way,
sight bite is
another way to talk
about a sound bite for the eye.
Perhaps it's B-Y-T-E
in the current context.
In any event, looking at
this, I see an ensemble.
Perhaps they're
icons and they're
trivial or trite cliches,
but actually, there's
a narrative here.
And in looking at
these images, for me,
I try to see what's in
the mind of the person who
edited and selected
them and arranged them
in a particular order.
What I see here is
seeing the unseen.
And so image and meaning, the
image is giving a meaning.
The meaning is what do we
see, what do we want to see?
Here, we see, I think,
my interpretation,
is a creation myth, as
done perhaps for MIT.
It is rather cold
in its own way.
We start out with energy.
Perhaps God is up
there in the sky,
but there is this
light and dark,
a creation of light and dark.
The Earth is then separated.
We see the Earth, the water.
It's been created.
We then see the
beginning of life
in the image of the
Watson-Crick genome.
We then see the
product of that, which
is the evolutionary
stage of primates.
Notice that we're missing plants
and other general taxonomic
groups.
Then we see the neonate, which
is recapitulating phylogeny,
I guess.
And then we see consciousness.
We see an image of creation
and the creative thought,
which then closes the circle.
Because then we're back to
the mind of the creator.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
SONTAG: I do think it takes
quite a feat of imagination
to see that first image has an
image of energy and creation,
but maybe I'm being
too literal here.
AUDIENCE: Big bang.
WILSON: It's the little bang.
SONTAG: Looks like
an atom bomb to me,
but I'm just being
naive, I guess.
LIGHTMAN: That was a
brilliant analysis.
PENROSE: Was that
the idea, or did he--
WILSON: Confess.
LIGHTMAN: It was not
the conscious idea.
But since we're talking about
the unconscious as well as
the consciousness, who knows?
Another question here.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Good evening.
I was wondering if each of
you, and if it's appropriate,
Mr. Lightman, you
as well, comment
on the distinction between
science communication and art,
as concisely as
possible, if you can.
WILSON: May I do that?
May I give that a try, Alan?
Let me give that a try.
Science communication
as you would
get in science and nature.
I'm trying to be brief.
It's all about
objectivity repeatability.
It is not about metaphor.
Metaphor is not welcome.
Emotional expression
is not welcome,
unless it's done very
chastely in the introduction
of the discussion.
The exact reverse of--
and it's about repeatability.
The exact reverse
is true of art.
Art is designed to
transmit emotion directly
from the creator
to the audience.
And it is all about metaphor.
The gold and silver
of science writing
is the discovery of
something that is verifiably
new in the physical world.
The gold and silver of art is
the power and the originality
of the metaphor and the
expression and the impact,
the general nature of the
impact it has on the audience.
[APPLAUSE]
PENROSE: I'll just
make a brief comment.
And I think they are different.
And the purpose of science
journalism is clarity.
You want to get an idea
across as clearly as you can,
and you might use a
visual image to do this.
Whereas, art isn't
necessarily trying to do that.
But on the other
hand, I do think
it is important that these
images should be pleasing.
And to have an
artistic quality means
you're more likely to
want to look at them.
And I think it's
important, but it shouldn't
detract from the clarity.
I think the clarity is
the major thing that
is important in science
journalism, at least
the visual part of it.
Clarity's important to
both parts, but I mean,
we're talking about
the visual image.
Whereas, art doesn't necessarily
aim at the same thing.
But I would like to see
art also in such images.
It's not the important thing.
LIGHTMAN: Let's have a
comment or question here.
AUDIENCE: I'd like to make a
comment on the Watson and Crick
photo.
This is a very iconic image,
and it represents, of course,
one of the century's
greatest discoveries.
And this has a bearing on
both this morning's session
and on Susan Sontag's comments.
I think this photo is
most interesting for what
it actually leaves out,
and that's the fact
that Watson and Crick
based their model, in part,
on data which they took
from Rosalind Franklin.
[APPLAUSE]
And I think this is
image, which we see over
and over again, it really
only tells us half the story.
And I wondered if people
could comment on that.
SONTAG: Well, we've got two
images that rather obscure
half the human race, don't we?
I think it's very
important, absolutely.
They're iconic images
and images that tell us
what we should remember.
That's one of the
things that-- that's
what I started to say at
the end of my remarks,
rather incoherently,
that images tell us
what we should remember.
And they occlude
or obscure things,
cast them into darkness.
And that's a perfect example.
I'm very glad you
made that point.
LIGHTMAN: Comment here.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
I'm sure we all
bring our own context
to what we're seeing up here.
And I have a brief comment
and a quick question.
And when I looked at the images,
it seems to me that all of them
can cause us to reflect on a
number of different things.
But that brain scan, I'm
not a neuroscientist,
but it may be the state in
which the mind is actually
meditative in reflection.
There's been some
articles of that of late
in some of the
magazines and journals.
When I see the
images together, all
of them except
the upper far left
have to do with
life or evolution
or reflecting on that
beautiful planet or that child
or that fetus or
that reflective mind
or discovering life in DNA,
except the one on the left.
I agree with you, Susan.
To me, I see destruction, so
that was quite a contrast.
I'm wondering if you could
share with us briefly,
if you had to describe your
image of what would represent
God is, what would that visual
image be for each of you,
if you could share that?
Thank you.
PENROSE: I actually drew
a picture of a creator
in one of my books.
And Susan might be
interested in this,
because I gave a lecture in
which I'd shown this picture.
And somebody, at the end of
the lecture, asked the question
and said, in your
depiction of God
creating the universe, why did
you depict her with a beard?
And so I said, well, look, let's
have that picture back again.
And I pointed out
that, actually, there's
deliberately two
different interpretations
of that picture.
One is a beard, and the other
is the hair coming around
like this.
But anyway, I should say I'm not
sure an atheist should really
talk about this question at
all, so somebody else maybe
have the--
LIGHTMAN: Does anyone want to--
any of you want to--
SONTAG: I'm afraid, for the
same reason Roger Penrose just
stated, I would have
to disqualify myself.
WILSON: Pass.
LIGHTMAN: Well, we have
run out of time tonight.
SONTAG: Oh, no.
A couple more.
LIGHTMAN: Should we
have a couple more?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, a couple more.
LIGHTMAN: We'll have two
more comments or questions
from the audience
from both sides here.
AUDIENCE: I'd like to ask Ms.
Sontag about her experience
last month in accepting the
Jerusalem Prize, in which she
challenged some of the popular
images and meanings that
go along with it in
the political arena.
I believe you were
quoted as saying,
"I believe the doctrine of
collective responsibility
as a rationale for
collective punishment
is never justified
militarily or ethically.
And I mean, of course,
the disproportionate use
of firepower against civilians,
the demolition of their homes,
the destruction of their
orchards and groves,
the deprivation of
their livelihood
and access to employment, to
schooling, medical services,
or as a punishment for
hostile military activities
in the vicinity of
those civilians."
And you are, of course,
referring to the Palestinians.
And I congratulate
you for making
that statement, more or less
in the jaws of the lion.
And I wonder what sort of
reaction you've gotten for it.
And what sort of
visual images would
make those sentiments come
home to people in America that
paid a lot of the bills for
those types of activities
and to people in
Jerusalem where you spoke?
[APPLAUSE]
SONTAG: I only like to
make political statements
about things that
I know firsthand.
I don't think it's appropriate.
I mean, I thank you
for your support.
But I think we should stay
with the subject this evening.
Maybe we can talk
about it after.
I do stand very much
for those sentiments.
I was very glad to
make that statement,
and I feel very
passionately about it,
but it's not the
subject tonight.
LIGHTMAN: One more
question or comment.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
This isn't for Ms. Sontag,
nor is it about images.
This is a question
for Dr. Wilson.
I personally have
always found myself kind
of not really knowing
what I want to do,
drifting around, without
really a sense of purpose.
But you've taken ants, and
you've made them your life.
And I was wondering
how you can--
I could never imagine
taking something so specific
and indulging myself
completely in it.
And I was wondering whether--
I mean, how you
think your life is--
how, by focusing on something so
specifically, you think that--
do you think that
you have a broader--
I don't know.
Just your thoughts
on it, really.
[APPLAUSE]
WILSON: I think the greatest
advice, possibly the most
effective advice, I've ever
given to young scientists
is to find the subject in
the great temple of science--
it's the room and the
bench and the subject
that you feel a surge of passion
of interest in, and go for it.
That's the best I can say.
AUDIENCE: How did you become
passionate about ants?
SONTAG: Let somebody--
let's let in a higher--
WILSON: Why did I become
passionate about ants?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
SONTAG: Most interesting
thing in the world.
WILSON: Let me suggest--
SONTAG: Go for it.
Go for it.
WILSON: --at the
next opportunity,
you put down some
cookie crumbles
on the ground near an ant
nest and watch and start
studying them.
And you will see what comes
as close to what life must
be like, might be like, on
another planet as you might
hope ever to see on this one.
[APPLAUSE]
LIGHTMAN: I'm going to
allow one more question,
and then we have to end.
AUDIENCE: I'd like to ask it.
It's poignant.
LIGHTMAN: The question
is coming from over here.
Can you ask a comment
or question, please?
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
I was wondering if the
members of the panel
could comment about the
importance of images
for the education of
the general public
about science, including
the notion that perhaps
images could contribute to
the inspiration of the public
toward supporting great
scientific achievements,
such as a trip to Mars?
Or simply the
importance of images
that serve to draw the public
into learning about the science
about the world around us?
WILSON: Alan, excuse me,
why don't you answer that?
SONTAG: Yes.
WILSON: We've left
Alan out of this a bit,
and Alan is one of our most
distinguished and practiced
expositors of just the
subject of that question.
[LAUGHTER]
This is known as
Wilson's revenge.
LIGHTMAN: Well, I think
that images inspire us,
just as novels do.
And you're really speaking
about looking to the future
and getting excitement
for the future.
And I believe that a
picture of Mars from space,
the Mars pictures, whatever
the scientific enterprise is--
a picture of Ed Wilson's ants--
I think inspire us.
I know that's a trite
phrase, but it's true.
I mean, we've all
reacted to these images
in a very visceral way.
Susan pointed out that
those are somewhat--
they're all pictures
that we've seen before.
And yet, they still
have the power
to evoke a reaction to us.
As Roger Penrose
began speaking, we
could see that he
was emotionally
affected by these images.
And I think that
images have that power.
And to the extent that the
scientific enterprise is
a human enterprise, that our
emotional support is important,
and images have that power.
So I will end there.
And let me thank everyone
for coming tonight.
[APPLAUSE]
