When Scientists Write Poetry . . .

Rife With Symbology!

                             CRIS SHAW   

Madonna of the Particle 

by

 Chris Shaw, 2013

I’m not sure exactly where my fas­ci­na­tion with Madon­nas was born, but I’ve loved Icons of all kinds for a very long time.

As an artist I’m intrigued with the the way icons present their ideas – an eas­ily under­stood, blunt cen­tral image jux­ta­posed with deep sym­bol­ism and cryp­tic geo­met­ric foun­da­tions. Icons also have a rea­son for exist­ing, they are con­vey­ers of information.

The mod­ern icons I cre­ate also con­vey infor­ma­tion, it could be a sci­en­tific con­cept, a polit­i­cal state­ment, or a pop-culture ref­er­ence. Regard­less, each icon has a story and a rea­son for existing.

In this body of work I use the Madonna as the vehi­cle to lit­er­ally carry the ideas I’ve cho­sen to por­tray. The titles are straight for­ward. How­ever, under­ly­ing and obfus­cated by the image is a rigid geo­met­ric base, over which the Madonna icon is con­structed. The geom­e­try within this base is a rid­dle to deci­pher as are many of the sym­bols within.  . . .

The “Madonna of the Par­ti­cle” and the “Madonna of Dark Mat­ter” both con­cern the recently dis­cov­ered Higgs-Boson par­ti­cle. The geo­met­ric base used within each image con­tains nat­ural ratios and curves that ref­er­ence the sub-atomic par­ti­cle col­li­sions which led to the “God Particle’s” discovery.  . . .

Each paint­ing com­mu­ni­cates its secrets in var­i­ous ways.

 

Madonna of the Dark Matter

by

 Chris Shaw, 2013

Want Some Good Science Reading?

 

Joe, over at It's Okay To Be Smart, has a great reading list that covers the many disciplines and then some!

 

Check out his Library

Photo source.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law.

First we guess it… Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what it would imply. And then we compare those computation results… directly to observation to see if it works.

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.

In that simple statement, is the key to science.

- physicist, Dr. Richard Feynman. Quoted on Jesuscreed.

YES, You Can Help Solve Puzzles For Science

FOLDIT

By playing a free video game, you can contribute to important scientific research for HIV/AIDS, Cancer, Alzheimers, and more.

If you enjoy game playing, visit the foldit site, and learn more about the project. Lend your time to an exciting and worthwhile endeavor.

This is an example of a puzzle that a human can see the obvious answer to

- fix the sheet that is sticking out!

QUOTE of the DAY

To all the many practical and pleasurable reasons anyone has to explore the sciences and to be excited and enthralled by science, evangelical Christians can add one more:

It’s God’s world, God’s cosmos. God made it. God is redeeming it. God loves it. Anyone who loves God ought to love the world as well — and to love learning about the world. 

We Christians ought to be famous for our love and devotion to the best, deepest, broadest and most ambitious science. We ought to be known for the same half-goofy, starry-eyed wonderment that the late Carl Sagan showed toward science. But that’s not the case. Perversely, the opposite is true.

-  Fred Clark, from The Slacktivist.

Related: Alex Knapp.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Science is a process of empirical rationalism that produces testable answers about the nature of the universe. We learn new knowledge, knowledge that actually holds up to critical scrutiny and testing against the real world. The pipes don't leak — not much, anyway, and we have a method that allows us to test and tighten everything up.

- PZ Myers.

WHEN I RAN ACROSS THIS QUOTE . . . WELL, IT JUST SAYS SO MUCH.

"Whenever I see a new expression of science denial, I think about my cat. He does not believe in the Law of Gravity. And yet, every day he falls off the dining room table." - Jill7 

Oh look, a new merit badge:

The "DESTROYER OF QUACKERY" badge

In which the recipient never ever backs down from an argument that pits sound science over quackery.