has coined the term "Aesthetic Engineering". In 2003 he received the "IEEE Technical Achievement" award for his early work on charge-coupled devices for solid state cameras and for his more recent activities in computer-aided design.
2008 Keynote Presentation: Modeling Our Universe -- and other things...
Scientists often claim to seek eternal truths, but their activities are better described as "model building." They look for the simplest models that predict observed phenomena as well as possible. In creating such models, they favor regularity and symmetry. Geometry and mathematics are primary tools to create such models. However, the most beautiful models may be pure figments of the mind and may have little to do with observable artifacts in nature. The mysterious 4-dimensional regular 11-Cell discovered in 1976 by Branko Grünbaum is such a construct. I will try to provide a visualization of this object.
Scientists sometimes get carried away by the elegance of a particular model and then try to force it upon observed phenomena with little contact with reality. A famous example is Kepler's Platonic model to explain the relative sizes of the planetary orbits. String Theory may be a more recent instance of that same phenomenon. Many scientist are trying very hard to find a set of simple formulas that explain the values of all the natural constants, as well as the sizes and properties of all observed elementary particles and fundamental forces. But how reasonable is such a quest? What can we learn from past, successful and unsuccessful, unification attempts? When does science become art or religion? |
