SCIENTIFIC CREATIVE URGE

Science is driven by the creative urge.

This may seem antithetical.  Our conventional understanding of science and it’s methods revolves typically around understanding.

Galileo, with his telescope, looked to the heavens.  And with his telescope, he understood that the moon was not a platonic sphere, but indeed it had imperfect mountains and craters.

Niels Bohr developed an explanation of atomic structure because he wanted to understand the regularities of the periodic table.  His atomic model posited the orbital shells of electrons.

Etc.

Consider this quote from the iconic John Archibald Wheeler, a scientist who developed understandings of black holes, developed understandings of nuclear fission,  and then closed his career with the goal of understanding gravitational waves.

“Yet I know the pursuit of science is more than the pursuit of understanding.  It is driven by the creative urge, the urge to construct a vision, a map, a picture of the world that gives the world a little more beauty and coherence than it had before.”

Understanding.  Creative urge.  Vision.  Picture.  More beauty in the world.

That is an exact analogue of what designers want to do.  We look for creative urges.  We draw pictures.  And ultimately we want to leave beauty in the world.

Many of these pages have searched for the confluence of design and science.  See DOES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD EXIST and SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION, to link two pages.

Wheeler’s charismatic statement is a direct acknowledgement, by a world class scientist, of our basic hunch.

Science!  Architecture!  Beauty!  Creative Urge!  Understanding!  Vision!

Who would have thought?