Deep Affinities: Art and Science

In this thought-provoking book, Philip F. Palmedo, a former physicist who now writes on art, reveals how the two defining enterprises of humankind--art and science--are rooted in certain common instincts, which we might call aesthetic: an appreciation of symmetry, balance, and rhythm; the drive to simplify and abstract natural forms, and to represent them symbolically.Palmedo traces these instincts back to a very early time in human history--demonstrating, for example, the level of abstract thinking required to create the stone tools and cave paintings of the Paleolithic--and then forward, to the builders of the Gothic cathedrals, to Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, to Einstein and Picasso.Illustrated with more than 125 creations of the genus Homo--from a flint hand ax chipped half a million years ago to the abstractions of Hilma af Klint and the James Webb Space Telescope--Palmedo's text leaves us with a new appreciation of the instinct for beauty shared by artists and scientists alike.