A sweeping look at scientific inspiration
Let me admit at the outset that I read the collection of lectures quite some time back. However, I remember with amazing clarity how much the lectures moved me. Chandrasekhar is not a man who draws superficial parallels between artstic endeavour and the scientific process. What the essays reveal are something intensely personal. They reflect what one of the most prominent Astrophysicists of our time feel about aesthetics - with perspective and sensitivity which harks back to C.P Snow's "Two cultures".
Art, seen from this scientist's point of view, seems to be all the richer for it, contrary to popular belief that rationality strips Art of its elemental passion. The essays go to show that the world we think we live in is not so fragmented after all, and keen perception, augmented with a desire to express, can smoothen the shards that have been left behind in the wake of reductionist thinking.
If you have ever dreamed about the creative cogwheels in scientific history, the essays go to show that they the burning need for an aesthetic whole need not be fundamentally different in the Arts. But there is a interesting and debatable point - which is linked with the unproductive geriatric scientist, and his equally productive counterpart.
But for the last chapter, based on the Karl Schwarzchild lectures on general relativity, most of the essays are at the "scientifically educated" level. One of the most remarkable chapters is about Arthur Eddington, and the Chandrasekhar's open-mindedness in assesing the acutely "conservative" giant of Stellar Physics for his contributions and his drawbacks. One cannot be overwhelmed by a sense of history at such moments, especially when you consider the fact that Chandra was snubbed by Eddington for proposing the idea of a black hole, at a time when such arrogance could take on strong racial overtones.
What M.C. Escher's offered the world of mathematical paradoxies and oddities with his lithographs is somewhat symbiotic to Chandrasekhar's lectures. One can only hope that these subtle threads between the "two cultures" will remain.
