Perspectives on Human Wonder

"Ref Practice" was a very boring title for a post, and having written both reference citations and the first summary, I thought I should try to combine them into a proper blog post. This is that attempt.

According to Gerry Hadden in "The Church Dome Painted by Graffiti Artists", a priest in Spain has had a graffiti artist adorn the main dome of his largely austere church in bold colours with a modern take on Romanesque Christian art (2013).

Meanwhile, "First glimpse of a black hole's spin"  (2013) reports that scientists using x-ray telescopes in space have acquired data that has enabled them to calculate the angular momentum of a super-massive black hole with an edge velocity approaching the speed of light, at the centre of a galaxy, which measurement gives clues about the formation of the galaxy itself.

Post-Enlightenment
Christian art from Spain.

As I was thinking about what these very different stories from the BBC News a week ago might have in common, it occurred to me that in their very different ways, both testify to the wondrously varied brilliance of human beings: one in the field of art and anthropology, and the other in our exponentially deepening understanding of the universe in which we live. I have admit that I think the new artwork in the church by Spanish graffiti artist House, whose real name is Raul Sanchez Araque, is rather more alive and cheerful looking than the very stilted, stereotyped and lifeless look of much Romanesque art. It always seemed to me that the art of that dark period of Western history, when the democratic and critical ideals of Greece and Rome had been eclipsed by the more primitive, superstitious beliefs of the despotic Eastern religions of Christianity, and later Islam, which brought in their immoral command types of moral thinking from the Bible and the Qur'an. The modern day interpreters from liberal and democratic Spain, reclaimed from both the Christians and the Moslems, looks great. I'm glad that the priest in charge of the church, Father Ramon Borr, had the good sense not to be bound by tradition but to try something new. It's a great success. If only the Catholic Church had more like him, it might be a much better organization, but this decent priest is unlikely to be elected the new pope.

NGC 1365 - 56 million light years away

And it was the Renaissance, when artists like da Vinci threw off the lifeless works of the dark Mediaeval age and returned to classical Greek models, that marked both the end of the Christian strangle-hold on Europe and the return to the classical Western ideals of Greece in thinking, society and politics that made possible the Enlightenment, which began the modern spurt of science, of reason and of democracy in the West. So far, that spurt has not been stamped out by censoring despots who hate free speech and reason. Indeed, as the increasing spread of globalization continues, the world is rapidly adopting the values of Western culture, which are apparently what the vast majority of citizens of every country want, however much their traditional rulers might hate such hopes and changes to the societies they rule over. Since Galileo was censored by oppressive popes, science and reason have increasingly spread so that today a group of scientists at Harvard University can confidently tell as how rapidly a most exotic heavenly body 56 million light years away from us  is spinning - when the light and x-rays the scientists have measured left that distant place, there were still dinosaurs walking the Earth! When I was born, not that long ago, black holes were not even believed to exist by most scientists, and now we are investigating their properties.

And tomorrow?

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Reference

First glimpse of a black hole's spin. (2013, February 27). BBC News Science & Environment. Retrieved March 6, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21607945

Hadden, G. (2013, February 27). The church dome painted by graffiti artists. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved March 6, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21529832