Art Philosophy and Science by Min Zou

Art is not something you see, but you let other people see things.

------ Edgar

Since I became a professional artist, I have been pondering the relationships between art, philosophy and science. Especially when I see a lot of artists actually shouted: Art is nothing! I want to discuss what on earth the art is. Here, I talk about my perception of art, philosophy and science, and how I have been engaging in my artistic creation.

First, I think everyone's art is the embodiment of his / her own cultural knowledge and culture connotation. Everyone speaks on his / her cultural background. Different cultural backgrounds and different social experience can lead to different ideas, which can lead to different arts.

Art itself is a special way that a human takes emotion and imagination as the characteristics to grasp the world, and also is the visual reflection of the real life and the spiritual world of human. With the development of society, the imagination and creativity of human are keeping getting on. Art breaks the boundaries of space-time, enhance people's sentiment, expand people's imagination, stimulate people's thoughts and feelings, and cultivate people's temperament. The art activity is not only an important part of the spirit civilization of a nation, but also an important part of the spiritual life of the individual. Outstanding artworks is the common spiritual wealth of all mankind.


The artists express and communicate their aesthetic susceptibility and aesthetic ideals by art creativity, the viewers meet their aesthetic needs and obtain the aesthetic feeling by art appreciation. Aestheticism is the perfect play of aesthetics. In addition to aesthetic value, arts have other social functions, such as cognitive function, educationˇ˘mold functions, and entertainment function and so on. And the social function of art is that people understand nature through art activities, understanding the social, historical knowledge, understanding life. Educational function of art is the people through the arts, by truth, goodness and beauty of nurturing and infection, which leads to thoughts and feelings, attitudes, values and other profound changes. Art entertainment concept is to meet people through the arts and aesthetic needs, access to the spirit of enjoyment and aesthetic pleasure.

Science is a social ideology, it is about nature, society and the law of development of thinking of knowledge. Science is not only objective factors, and some of the factors. First, only natural persons have a natural talent and natural sciences are man-made out of anyway. Human language, human way of thinking, people do experiments, where the convention was certainly factors. Science in the end what is the truth of the factors, which is a human construct factor, which is now a problem in the philosophy of science.

Over the past scientists science and science, to satisfy their curiosity, truth-seeking. Some of the early scientists to dedicate themselves to science. They believe that science is value neutral. Now the scientific community has serious consequences, such as create nuclear bombs, biological weapons, chemical weapons could destroy mankind. Cloning, genetic engineering, IVF, organ transplants, and so this type of technology in the future of the entire human life, ethics has a significant impact. So scientists can not only truth, do not ask its social consequences. Science after all, or to the service of humanity, for human happiness services.

Different arts and sciences, scientific use of human reason reflects the objective laws of the world. Art reflects the world through human sensibility, including objective and subjective world. More of a scientific "discovery", and art more of a "creation." Art is a reflection of the true feelings of human heart.

So what I am now in my art to create it?

Einstein is one of my most admired scientists. Einstein's theory of relativity in my eyes is the most beautiful theory. Curved space-time, relative time and relative space, like a poem, is an imaginative and like a beautiful picture. I like the philosophy, the philosophy in my mind is the pursuit of beauty, the natural beauty of the pursuit of truth and exploration. Especially when I was studying Plato's theory of ideas, Hume's empiricism, Kant's transcendentalism, Sartre's existentialism, I increasingly feel that the philosophy of the United States is almost unparalleled. A philosophical look on science would be like? With a scientific look on what happens arts?

Alexander in his "space, time, and the gods", said: "philosophy, all major problems are depends on what time and space - in particular, how the two interrelated questions." Ancient times, time and space has always been a big topic, people ask what time in the end. Augustine once lamented: "What is time? No one asked me, I'd know, someone asked me, I would like, but understand the loss. Heidegger also said:" If the only time it is philosophical issues. Whether in natural science, or as a way to anthropology, time itself has said that is not yourself. Time has a secret nature. Thus, the concept of time is the time history of misunderstanding, but history. All times are probably in the history of the concept of human knowledge on the macro level and repeating the proof of Augustine in the level of individual ideas have encountered difficulties or desperate. "

Poincare in the era of the famous French scientist, non-Euclidean geometry has been around, and you can find it in the practical application of physics. Unique mathematical system is broken, it can be built on top of different visual! How to determine whether the European or non-Euclidean geometry represents an innate intuitive it? Poincare said that they are comprehensive, but not innate, but agreed. To a certain convenience, some purpose, we agreed to a rule as an axiom, and thus the establishment of a knowledge system to. Poincare's conventionalism and space-time theory, Mach's principle of relativity, the speed of light the same principle of the philosophy of love and so make the advent of Einstein's theory of relativity. It tells people the time is not absolute and unchanging, absolute space is not constant, are relative, time and space are closely linked, isolated time and space did not exist in isolation, the space-time is curved. Curved space-time tells matter how, time and space tells matter how movement. Theory of relativity put an end to the concept of absolute time, it tells us the time is a subjective concept. Meanwhile, the theory of relativity also tells us there is no absolute thing, absolute idea, the ultimate truth no longer exists.

So since 2010, I created a time series of oil paintings. These paintings have time to travel through time and space, curved space-time, the magic of the universe, flying to the universe, and the alien dialogue, Star ladies and so on. These paintings can be said that I comprehend the universe, the exploration of life, but also my knowledge of natural science and philosophy over the years the accumulation of knowledge.

The universe, we all know that it is the sum of time and space, one-dimensional time and space multi-dimensional scientific speculation exists in the world we live in, and now scientists believe that 10-dimensional space, and we can only feel the three spatial dimensions and a time dimension. If a space less than two-dimensional space is certainly not produce life, but it is hard to imagine a higher dimension.

In these paintings, I try to have far-reaching and mystery of the infinite universe, the universe of the layering, depth and breadth of a sense of boundless show in front of people, let people taste the endless universe, time travel and magic blurred galaxies. In these paintings in my years of painting techniques in oil painting into the West, but also the actual situation of Chinese philosophy, yin and yang theory, should be transported to the Western oil painting, especially in time for the media, has formed its own unique painting.