Week 1 - Me and Two Cultures

Hi, dear colleagues. I am excited to take part in this quarter's discussion of art, science and technology. Being a computer science student, I have been fortunate enough to experience the fusion of art and technology in both daily life and the industry.

Professor Robert Greene as a violinist.
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~greene/Robertviolininst.jpg

I have been devoted to mathematics and computer science since the freshman year. Besides completing academic goals, I am also keen on researching for anecdotes and trivia of my professors. I am surprised to find out that many mathematicians are also musicians. For example, my MATH 31 professor Dr. Robert Greene is also an audio expert and musician, and he is the violin instructor of Russel Crowe, the portrayer of John Nash in the well-know biopic Beautiful Mind. Just another example, my CHEM 20A professor Eric Scerri usually plays one piece of guitar in the last lecture in a quarter. You can find a video of his performance on YouTube.

Professor Eric Scerri plays guitar in a lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1EOzAr7WKo

Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
https://books.google.com/

My discoveries convince me that art and science are not far away from each other. Indeed, even the third party of the "triangulation" – a term proposed by Professor Vesna to describe the relationship between scientists, artists and writers – the writers or intellectuals in traditional sense are also merging with the scientists. (121) John Brockman's book The Third Culture presents a list of figures who are not only influential scientists but also exceptional writers. Amongst them, the name Steven Pinker catches my attention especially, because his excellent book The Language Instinct is the textbook of Linguistics 1, which I took two years ago in summer. The book has been one of the few books that I manage to read to the last page.

If Snow were alive, he would be satisfied to see the ongoing paradigm shift in education because he believed that the gap between cultures must be filled by education. (35 - 42) Every student here in UCLA can feel it. The university enforced general education courses. For example, as an engineering school student, I have also taken courses in geology, history and art. My department also includes an engineering ethics course in the curriculum. It is an interesting fact that the first week of that course and this one both coincidentally focuses on the thesis of C.P. Snow. The ultimate goal of such educational effort is to improve the mutual understanding of the "Two Cultures".

One slide from the first lecture of ENGR 183EW – Engineering Ethics
Gershon Weltman. Slides. Accessed 04/01/2016.

In my field, artistic visualization of process and data has become a significant pathway of learning and understanding. Educators have designed intuitive animations to teach algorithms to beginners. The following video visualize the process of sorting a list of elements in ascending order.

Fifteen algorithms in six minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRA0W1kECg

Again, it is really exciting for me to join this course and explore the potential released by the collision of art, science and technology. Nice to meet you!

Bibliography

J. Brockman. The Third Culture. 1995. Print.

R. Greene. Personal Website. Web. http://www.math.ucla.edu/~greene/. Accessed 04/01/2016.

C.P. Snow. Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. 1964. Print.

V. Vesna. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." 2001. Web. Accessed 04/01/2016.

V. Vesna. DESMA 9 Lectures on Two Cultures. 2016. Video. Accessed 03/31/2016.