The Subjectivity of Science, Crowdsourced

What scientific rationale has to do with Buddhist philosophy and mapping the Internet.

Compared to art, scientific rationale is a string of clear-cut, well-defined arguments and concepts. So why is it, then, that it’s so difficult to define and describe science itself, our understanding of it and the place we see for it in the world?

Science communicator Tim Jones decided to explore the wide spectrum of subjective and diverse interpretations by asking scientists, journalists, students, and other thinkers what science means to them. The result is The Exquisite Corpse of Science, a fascinating worldwide art mosaic that illustrates just how rich, broad and wildly intricate our understanding of the seemingly rigid is.

Daniel Mietchen, Post-doc, University of Jena, Germany

'This magnetic resonance matrix illustrates the convergence of evolutionary and developmental biology. A frog tadpole gradually develops in the top nine rows, while the last row takes us back 150 million years to ancient squid fossils called belemnites. The single green slice echoes Mietchen’s displeasure with the failure of the 2009 Iranian Green Revolution, as well as the Twitter practice of adjusting avatars to reflect one’s interests and allegiance.'

From a Kenyan pharmacologist to a British silversmith to a nanotechnology expert, the drawings range from the meticulously detailed to the artistically abstract, from wide-eyed wonder to grim apocalypticism.

Erin Conel, Silversmith, UK

'We are but a speck in the vastness of a galaxy whirl, upon which a tool-wielding raven and a cuttlefish nestle with Huxley’s chalky cocoliths. The plane, sphere, and hyperbolic shapes symbolize Euclidian elliptic and hyperbolic geometries. Euler’s Identity represents the beauty of simple statements, while the coffee and donut equation signifies this former finance analyst’s favorite branch of math—topology. The native California bee represents concerns around invasive species. Conel’s new profession gets nods with the phase diagram and the periodic table. At the core is a six-point guide to the scientific method.'

Nyokabi Musila, Pharmacologist, Kenya and UK

'Science is about understanding our inner selves, the external environment, and the systems that affect us. The amoeba and atomic swirl represent microscopic systems too small to study with the naked eye, while electrons remind us of planets orbiting in the solar system. The multi-dimensional eye moves, flexes, and experiments to test new ideas—ideas that force us to recognize we are part of something greater.'

The project reminds us of Kevin Kelly’s effort to crowdsource something equally widespread yet equally subjectively understood in The Internet Mapping Project. And it bespeaks the seemingly obvious but surprisingly poorly honored idea, not far from Buddhist philosophy, that our experience of the world amounts not to the facts and tangibles of our circumstances but to our highly subjective and personal interpretation of them.

Jörg Heber, Nature Materials Senior Editor, UK

'Less is more in Joerg Heber’s sketch of two people sharing the same thought bubble. Heber, a senior editor at the journal Nature Materials, emailed his picture within five minutes of the project’s launch on Twitter—making it entry number one. Given the speed of production, it’s probably also the closest to the spontaneity of the original Exquisite Corpse. Echoing some other artists’ thoughts about interdisciplinary work, Heber says his drawing represents collaboration.'

Our favorite — not necessarily aesthetically, but rather conceptually — is the one by Jones himself, which stresses the crucial role of interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-cultural empathy not only in our definition of science itself, but also in resolving difficult issues like reconciling human activity with environmental preservation.

Tim Jones, Science Communicator, UK

'As someone whose purpose is to understand and influence the world, it makes sense that Tim Jones’ avatar would carry the tools to counter famine and disease. Science, cross-cultural empathy, and interdisciplinary collaboration can help resolve conflicts such as those between wildlife preservation and human activity (symbolized by the gibbon framed against the palm oil plant), evidence-based knowledge and policymaking (the glass-enclosed leaf), and religion and science education (the split half-circle containing symbols). Feynman’s illustration of quantum electrodynamics reminds us of discoveries ahead.'

See the full slideshow over at the always-wonderful SEED Magazine as you contemplate the strokes and smudges of your own subjective conception.

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Gift Guide: Kids & The Eternal Kid

From thinking to tinkering, by way of color, music and photography.

This is Part 2 of the three-part Brain Pickings holiday gift guide. Today, we’re looking at goods and goodies for kids of all ages and the eternal kid in everyone.

HERE COMES SCIENCE

Indie rock icons They Might Be Giants are among the most revolutionary musicians of our time. Their critically acclaimed Here Comes Science children’s series lives up to their relentless thinking-in-all-kinds-of-directions innovation and consistent excellence. The 2-disc CD/DVD album is a bundle of creativity and entertainment, tied with a ribbon of education. Although aimed at the K-5 set, the playful lyrics and brilliantly animated videos are an absolute treat for musicologists and design junkies alike — we can attest.

We reviewed it in full, with trailers and more, here.

Perfect for: Musicologists, science lovers, those into creative and non-traditional education

FUJIFILM INSTAX MINI

Polaroid may have barely escaped the kiss of obsolescence, but instant film cameras will always hold immeasurable nostalgic charm in the digital age. The new Fujifilm Instax MINI offers a lovely twist on your dad’s old Land Cam, packaged in a gorgeously designed Mac-ish white body that’s just a joy to hold and look at. It prints credit-card-sized photos and, for those interested in the technical shenanigans, has a built-in flash, four exposure settings for indoor and outdoor shooting, and — our favorite — a wicked wide-angle lens that makes for some gorgeous, gorgeous shots. It’s a return to simpler times of no memory cards and USB cables and i-anything. But it gives you more creative control while still being a no-brainer to operate.

Sure, we love (love love) the design, but we’re even more taken with what it stands for — an analog connection to the fleeting moment, celebrating the essence of the presence in a way that preserves it for the future.

Perfect for: Budding photographers, creatively inclined kids, design aficionados, hopeless nostalgics, retro lovers

ABC3D

Who doesn’t love a good pop-up book? Marion Bataille‘s ABC3D takes the familiar genre it to a whole new level.

Slick, stylish and designerly, it’s hard to capture its tactile, interactive magic in static words — you have to have it in your hands to truly appreciate it.

We took a closer look, along with 4 more creative alphabet books, last week.

Perfect for: Designers and their kids, bookbinding geeks, paper craft lovers

PART OF IT

It’s never too early — or too late — to introduce the idea of the conscious consumer. And when it’s done with quirk and creativity, it’s bound to engage, inspire and, well, effect change. Enter Part Of It, a wonderful venture founded by illustrator duo Christopher Sleboda and Kathleen Burns in 2007, working with artists to create products for causes they are passionate about.

From Helvetica alphabet t-shirts to a lovely tote bags, profits from these goodies benefit charities chosen by the artists. (Who, by the way, include Brain Pickings darling Adrian Johnson.)

Perfect for: The socially-conscious and design-driven

THE INDIE ROCK COLORING BOOK

Indie music defines itself through the colorful quirk of its artists and evangelists. Without that, it would blend in with the grey mediocrity of the mainstream. For the past two years, obscenely talented UK illustrator Andy J. Miller has been working on a project that celebrates this whimsy. Today, he finally releases the Indie Rock Coloring Book — a wonderful collection of hand-illustrated activity pages, mazes, connect-the-dots, and coloring pages for indie icons like Bloc Party, The Shins, Iron & Wine, Broken Social Scene, Devendra Banhart, MGMT, The New Pornographers, The National, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

We reviewed it in full, with trailers and more, here.

Perfect for: Indie music fans and their artistically inclined offspring

THE ELEMENTS

Photographer and all-around geek Theodor Gray spent 7 years gathering objects, from the fascinating to the mundane, that embody and exemplify the 118 elements in the periodic table. Then he shot them brilliantly, producing The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe — an utterly captivating exploration of the matter that we, and all the things around us, are made of.

Set to the first authorized video version of Tom Lehrer’s iconic eponymous song, The Elements video gives you a taste for what to expect from this gem of a book.

Perfect for: Neo-geeks, science junkies, photography lovers, visual learners

MAGNA TILES

We’re firm believers in the power of tinkering in developing creativity.

And there’s nothing more stimulating to the creative brain than playing with simple, flat shapes and basic colors to produce a near-infinite variety of 3D whimsy. Which is why we love this 100-piece set of clear-color magna tiles. Sure, kids will be all over it, but we dare you not to love it yourself.

Perfect for: Tinkerers, builders, color lovers, budding industrial designers

POOH’S COMEBACK

In 1926, English author Alan Alexander Milne took a shelf of his son’s stuffed toys and turned them into some of the best-loved books ever published — the Winnie-the-Pooh series was born. This year, 81 years after Christoper Robin and the gang left the Hundred Acre Wood, they are back for a new adventure.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood is among the most epic comebacks in English literature. Although Milne himself is long dead, the new book is written by David Benedictus — who also produced the audio adaptations of Winnie-the-Pooh, starring Dame Judi Dench — and meticulously based on Milne’s Pooh stories, with artwork by Mark Burgess in the style of original illustrator E. H. Shepard.

We reviewed it in full here.

Perfect for: Readers, nostalgics, Pooh lovers of all ages

LEGO ARCHITECTURE

We love LEGO — who doesn’t? And what better way to learn about the man-made hallmarks of our civilization than by building them with your bare hands?

No, you won’t be lugging mastabas across the Egyptian desert — we’re talking about the LEGO Architecture Series. From the Taj Mahal to Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces, you — or your little one — can get down and dirty with humanity’s greatest architectural achievements.

Perfect for: Tinkerers, builders, architecture lovers

CRAYOLA EXECUTIVE PEN

Ah, Crayola. Easily one of the most beloved brands of all time. Even just saying the name evokes that distinct, wonderful smell of your first crayon.

Now, you can resurrect your inner kid with a lovely, desk-job-safe Crayola Executive Pen, in orange, green, violet and yellow. Need we say more?

Perfect for: Everyone!

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Carbon Sucker: CR5

What carbon dioxide has to do with national security and a dog’s tail.

Recycling alone won’t do it, carbon offsets are a joke, and geoengineering is a bandaid at best. Even our most committed resolve to change our unsustainable ways may just take too long to prevent the grim consequences of decades of wasteful consumption. Let’s face it, the best solution to our climate pickle would be to suck the carbon dioxide right out of the atmosphere and be done with it.

Luckily, researcher Rich Diver at Sandia National Laboratories, a U.S. facility developing national security products through science and technology, has been working on just that — and then some. (Because, at this point, the climate crisis is a matter of trans-national security.) He has developed a prototype for a machine that uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels like gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel — an interesting alternative to carbon sequestration where, instead of stashing CO2 in underground storage, carbon dioxide can actually be put right back into the energy system.

The device, called the Counter-Rotating-Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5), may take 15-20 years before it becomes an efficient market-ready technology. (Researchers want to pump up its efficiency to a few percent, double that of real-world photosynthesis.) And, of course, there’s still the glaring issue of using energy waste to create non-clean-burning energy, which in turn creates more waste — no dog chasing its tail ever got anywhere.

But we still think the development is important — not even because of the actual technology, but because of what it connotes: A large-scale effort from governments, institutions and scientists to brainstorm possible solutions and really get their hands dirty until they find the right ones, the ones that both help undo decades worth of damage and offer long-term solutions for the future.

Meanwhile, though, you should still recycle, you know. And don’t forget today (if you’re in the U.S. — tomorrow if you’re anywhere else) is Buy Nothing Day.

via Inhabitat

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