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Prehistoric Masking

I finished rereading Scott McCloud’s great book Understanding Comics recently. Like a good conversation with an intelligent friend, it keeps giving even after it’s over. It got me thinking about a few things. One such thoughts was about prehistoric cave art.

In chapter 2, the book argues (comics style) that simplified or iconic pictorial representations of things are more relatable, more accepting of us projecting ourselves onto them. We make a face out of a circle with two dots and a line inside of it, then let our imagination fill in the blanks. Since iconic representations are abstract, they are universal. This simple cup can stand in for the one on your desk, that rectangle can be your computer monitor and the stick figure is you, at least for a moment. The reason this is possible, according to the book, is that we do not see ourselves. My face is a mask that is visible to others, but not to me, so my mental image of my own face is very abstract. Now imagine if you are presented with a photo-realistic picture of someone, it would be much harder to identify with that picture. We might not see our own face much, but we see everyone else’s. A realistic picture is specific, not universal, and it makes you aware of its specificity just like you are aware of the details in the appearances of others. We “mask” ourselves in iconic images, and perceive otherness in realistic ones.

The End of Physics

A perfect start for a physics blog.

A few days ago, I came across this article by the director of the IAS, Robbert Dijkgraaf, in which he argues that fundamental physics is not only alive and well, but that it’s prospering. Throughout the article, I couldn’t help but feel that he made the case for exactly the opposite.

Exaggerated or not, one hears the reports of late 19th century physicists declaring the completion of the fundamental laws of physics and that all that is left is to refine measurements to more decimal places (check this discussion on Stack Exchange). This is often used as a cautionary tale against any claim that physics is over, after all, the 20th century started with two great revolutions of fundamental physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The moral of the tale is to never think that we have discovered all the laws because, over a century ago, people thought the same and they were wrong. But isn’t the ultimate goal of theoretical physics to find the final laws at some point? Did we catch ’em all? I certainly hope not, otherwise this website will be pointless.