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The Nexus - Julio Mario Ottino with Bruce Mau ***

Any book on the crossover between art and science walks a risky tightrope - it's very easy to plunge into pretentiousness. Perhaps the main problem is that such books always seem to be driven by the art side, reflecting that perhaps Snow's two cultures concept, where the arts and humanities look down on the sciences, is yet to be resolved. This feeling was not helped by the structure of the book - any title that can get to page 43 before it starts creates a sense of foreboding in the reader who wants to get down to the nitty gritty.

Nonetheless, I've always hoped I would discover an arts/science crossover title that worked - like most people with a scientific background I'm enthusiastic about much of the arts and really want to get a book that fulfils this mix. The book is framed in terms of using the crossover for finding creative solutions to complex problems - a topic I've lectured on - which was particularly encouraging.

Julio Mario Ottino has some powerful points to make. I very much liked the line 'In the popular view, art is about creation, technology about invention, and science about discovery. The reality is more complex.' This is pulled apart at some length. Ottino suggests very different traditional creative processes where, for example, art innovates by starting afresh each time, technology has adaption with disruption and science builds on the past with infrequent disruptions (the last displayed as little wiggles rather than major paradigm shifts). I use the 'P' word as those little wiggles don't reflect the reality of how large 'infrequent disruptions' such as quantum physics can be, providing a total change in the way of looking at things, even if the past still has an input.

I very much like the way that Ottino suggests there ought to be ways to learn from differences across these three disciplines, but he doesn't seem to provide any explanation of how to practically do this (it's a little difficult to be sure, because the book is quite waffly). It's possible that the problem is that the answer is trivial, but that doesn't make much of a book - a bit like diets. The reality of healthy diets is very simple: don't eat too much, get a good balance nutritionally intake. But diet books have to make things a lot more complicated. Here, again, perhaps all we can say is art ought to build more on the past, technology and science should look at starting afresh more - but that's not enough to make a coffee table-sized book.

Here, the diet is 'nexus thinking' (sorry, 'Nexus thinking'), which seems to be a mix of using your whole brain (that old chestnut) and taking an approach that combines traditional 'creative arty' and 'analytical scientific' approaches. To quote (and to get a flavour of the waffly text): 'Surface level Nexus thinking is apparent when technology/science visibly blends with arts, or when hard-core engineering emerges in products infused with raw emotion. But Nexus thinking is also present when analytical thinking and creative thinking synergistically coexist; when deductive and inductive thinking operate side-by-side to complement each other.' Right on.

Overall, I'd say this book has a worthy (I don't mean that as an insult) and sensible goal - but I think Bruce Mau's design goes about dealing with that goal in entirely the wrong way. A big, glossy book with lots of big pictures and lots of vague text in small print isn't a great way to communicate concepts in a practical way. A very good idea, but not the best execution - ironically it tries too hard to be creative in a way that weakens communication.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
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