View images from Approaching Chaos, Dr. Eric Heller's exhibit, currently on display at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.
Arts and Science. They go so beautifully together in university mottos and on college shields. A unity deeper than paper and pencil, or books and teachers. But in practice, real art and real science are somewhat uncomfortable companions.
Scientists often dismiss aesthetics in the work they do, valuing hypothesis, theory and proof over representations of the beauty of physical phenomena. At the same time, artists are suspicious of the "Type A's" in lab coats. "They work with cold computers and petri dishes, and where's the creativity, the subjectivity, the beauty in that?"
But now advances in computers and photography have scientists and artists joining together to tear down chaos and to frame the invisible in new ways.
