Reconciling the Irreconcilable: Can the metamodern artwork resolve the present tensions between our self-conceptions and accumulated knowledge?

Reconciling the Irreconcilable:

Can the metamodern artwork resolve the present tensions between

our self-conceptions and accumulated knowledge?

Written by Jared Vaughan Davis

MA Art and Science

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (University of the Arts London)

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If there is a single uncontestable fact about the present era, it is that knowledge

grows (Deutsch, 2011; Pinker, 2013; Searle, 2014). Over the past quarter-century, we

have witnessed such vast and stunning scientific discoveries and technological

advancements that one can only imagine how a great thinker of the past like a Darwin or

Leibniz might react were they to flip through a contemporary textbook in biochemistry or

computer science.

Whether one chooses to explain this exponential heightening of knowledge and

the success of the natural sciences in the postmodern language of Kuhn and

Feyerabend, or in the philosophical terms of constructive empiricism1 or scientific

realism2, the fact is, we can say with confidence, ‘science works,’ our understanding of

reality increases, and despite the contemporary doomsayers who reiterate much of the

anti-Enlightenment thought of the French postmodernists3 (Friedland, 2012; Gray, 2015;

Hughes, 2012), nearly all global measurements indicate that we are living in the most

peaceful and prosperous era of human history4 (Shermer, 2011; Pinker 2012, 2013,

2015).

However, given that we have this enormous extension of human knowledge,

particularly in the form of atomic physics and chemistry, and acknowledging the vast

transformations to our material landscape which recent scientific developments have

brought about, we are now faced with a new and pressing paradox, one which

                                                                                                               1  Philosopher  Bas  van  Fraassen  characterizes  constructive  empiricism  as  a  combination  of  two  theses:  “(a)  Science  aims  at  empirically  adequate  theories;  and  (b)  acceptance  of  scientific  theories  involves  belief  only  in  their  empirical  adequacy  (though  acceptance  involves  more  than  belief;  namely,  commitment  to  theory)”  (Brown,  2012,  p.202).    2  Philosopher,  mathematician  and  computer  scientist  Hilary  Putnam  describes  scientific  realism  as  incorporating  three  theses:  “(a)  Theoretical  terms  refer  to  unobservable  entities;  (b)  Theories  are  (approximately)  true;  and  (c)  There  is  referential  continuity  in  theory  change”  (Brown,  2012,  p.191).    3  Postmodernism  involves  a  movement  of  culture  and  texts  that  includes  the  work  of,  amongst  others,  French  philosophers  Jean-­‐François  Lyotard,  Michel  Foucault,  Gilles  Deleuze,  Jacques  Derrida,  and  Jean  Baudrillard  (Aylesworth,  2005).    4  In  The  Better  Angels  of  Our  Nature  (2012),  author  Steven  Pinker  provides  overwhelming  evidence  that  globally  (1)  life  expectancy  is  increasing,  (2)  poverty  rates  are  decreasing  and  well-­‐being  is  improving,  (3)  war  is  becoming  rarer  and  claims  fewer  lives,  (4)  rates  of  violence  are  on  the  decline,  and  (5)  racism,  sexism,  and  other  forms  of  discrimination  are  decreasing.    

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philosopher John Searle calls “the central problem of intellectual life today” (Searle,

2014) — if the picture of reality that science has provided us is correct, and our world

really is made up entirely of mindless, meaningless particles (as described by atomic

physics), how do we reconcile this picture with our self-conception as conscious, free,

mindful, moral, rational, social, language-speaking agents? (Searle, 2014)

In other words, how do we resolve the seemingly inescapable and irreconcilable

disunity between the facts of modern science and our traditional self-representations?

And if, as Searle claims, our philosophers, theologians and scientists can hardly put this

problem into anything more than the crudest of terms, how then might the artist give

representation to this conflict? Can such a central tension to the present human

condition be expressed, much less resolved, within a work of fine art5?

In what follows, I will look at two works of contemporary fine art that attempt to

deal with these questions. I will argue that these artworks exemplify what cultural

theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker have referred to as

metamodernism, an “emerging structure of feeling” (2010, p.2) characterized by an

attempt to negotiate these and other contemporary philosophical tensions through the

employment of two distinct intellectual strategies: the oscillation between oppositions

(e.g. between the modern and postmodern, between reason and romanticism, between

the objective and subjective, between the known and the unknown, et al.), and the

adoption of an as if epistemology (similar to that of Kant’s “negative” idealism).

Situated “epistemologically with (post) modernism, ontologically between (post)

modernism, and historically beyond (post) modernism” (Vermeulen and van den Akker,

2010, p.2), I contend that the metamodern discourse is one generated by the tensions

                                                                                                               5  Throughout  this  essay  I  use  the  standard  definition  of  “creative  art,  especially  visual  art  whose  products  are  to  be  appreciated  primarily  or  solely  for  their  imaginative,  aesthetic,  or  intellectual  content”  (Oxforddictionaries.com,  n.d.).  

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inherent to Searle’s question, and I aim to describe how the works cited in this essay

epitomize a contemporary ambition to reconcile our self-conceptions with our

accumulating knowledge — a double-bind that echoes the rivalry between our “modern

desire for sens6” and our “postmodern doubt about the sense of it all” (Vermeulen and

van den Akker, 2010, p.6). I argue that by abandoning aesthetic dogmas of

“deconstruction, parataxis7, and pastiche” in favour of “aesth-ethical notions of

reconstruction, myth, and metaxis8” (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010, p.6), these

works demonstrate a shifting dialectic between art, culture, philosophy, and science that

cannot be explained solely in terms of the postmodern.

Finally, I will equate this metamodern attitude with what I will call a romantic

naturalism, which I allege is correspondent to the mind-set embodied in the quest for a

Grand Unifying Theory9 in contemporary physics, and one that is ultimately fundamental

to the modern scientific enterprise. In drawing this link, my own argument will attempt to

negotiate the tension latent in the dichotomy Searle poses, which, in another guise, has

long divided the abstract realm of the humanities from the empirical realm of the natural

sciences.

I intend what follows to be an essayistic series of connected observations and

explanations, as opposed to a scientific, codified and linear program of thought. It is

clearly beyond the scope of this essay to address all of the philosophical, scientific, and

artistic concerns within which this subject matter is embedded, and I seek only to relate

the relevant concepts to one another through an open-ended analysis, one that should                                                                                                                6  Meaning,  purpose,  direction,  et  al.    7  In  aesthetic  terms,  parataxis  generally  refers  to  the  placement  of  conceptual  or  visual  elements  side  by  side.    8  Vermeulen  and  van  den  Akker  quote  German  philosopher  Eric  Voegelin  as  describing  metaxis  as  follows:  “Existence  has  the  structure  of  the  In  Between,  of  the  Platonic  metaxy,  and  if  anything  is  constant  in  the  history  of  mankind  it  is  the  language  of  tension  between  life  and  death,    immortality  and  mortality,  perfection  and  imperfection,  time  and  timelessness,  between  order  and  disorder,  truth  and  untruth,  sense  and  senselessness  of  existence;…”  (Vermeulen  and  van  den  Akker,  2010,  cited  on  p.6).    9  Also  referred  to  as  a  ‘unified  field  theory.’  Philosopher  of  science  Peter  Achinstein  describes  a  Grand  Unifying  Theory  as  one  “capable  of  explaining  everything  on  the  basis  of  a  set  of  fundamental  laws  which  have  no  further  explanation,  and  laws  which  govern  a  set  of  basic  entities,  those  which  can’t  be  decomposed  into  anything  further”  (Achinstein,  2014).  

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be read as an appeal for further exploration and debate, and one that might inform the

development of my own artistic practice.

1 The Metamodern Ontology – Romantic Naturalism and Oscillation

Agreeably or not, the investigations of modern science tread upon territory that

has been traditionally affiliated with a spiritual dimension. As Charles Jencks, considered

to be one of the first champions of postmodernism, puts it, our ““old modern

dichotomies” – body/mind, spirit/soul – have been thrown into disarray by recent

discoveries in neuroscience and quantum mechanics” (Jencks, 2007, p.193). These and

other rapidly developing fields such as astrophysics, evolutionary biology, and modern

genetics now provide us with an account of reality in a language that would have been

indecipherable just a few hundred years ago. That is to say, the scientist of the twenty-

first century does not speak in the ontological dialect of ‘monads’ and ‘souls’, but rather,

in the naturalistic10 terms of ‘atoms’ and ‘brains.’

Many have warned, however, that this language of ‘atoms’ and ‘brains’ can only

be used to answer one side of Searle’s dilemma. These thinkers express deep

resentment when the language of science is thought to intrude into the territory of the

humanities (Rorty, 1991; Pinker, 2013), and many writers without a trace of belief in

“God, the soul, and immortality” (Searle, 2014) nonetheless maintain that there is

something inappropriate about scientists commenting on life’s most sacred questions

(Pinker, 2013). When scientists are guilty of this intrusion, they are regularly accused of

“determinism, reductionism, essentialism, positivism, and worst of all, something called

“scientism”” (Pinker, 2013), a bogeyman that is sometimes associated with preposterous

                                                                                                               10  In  its  most  basic  form,  naturalism  refers  to  an  understanding  of  reality  that  is  “exhausted  by  nature,  containing  nothing  ‘supernatural’,  and  that  the  scientific  method  can  be  used  to  investigate  all  areas  of  reality,  including  the  ‘human  spirit’”  (Papineau,  2007).    

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notions, such as that “science is all that matters” or that “scientists should be entrusted

to solve all problems” (Pinker, 2013).

In a controversial article from 2013 in The New Republic, cognitive scientist and

popular science communicator Steven Pinker responds to these charges by saying:

“Scientism does not mean that all current scientific hypotheses are true; most

new ones are not, since the cycle of conjecture and refutation is the lifeblood of

science. It is not an imperialistic drive to occupy the humanities; the promise of

science is to enrich and diversify the intellectual tools of humanistic scholarship,

not to obliterate them. And it is not the dogma that physical stuff is the only thing

that exists. Scientists themselves are immersed in the ethereal medium of

information, including the truths of mathematics, the logic of their theories, and

the values that guide their enterprise. In this conception, science is of a piece

with philosophy, reason, and Enlightenment humanism … and it is these that

scientism seeks to export to the rest of intellectual life” (Pinker, 2013).

Thus, while no sane thinker would try to explain the human condition solely in terms of

biology, chemistry, and physics, the committed naturalist can still reasonably ask

questions about consciousness, morality, aesthetic judgment, and free will, without

invoking the dualist11 tradition that would disconnect our immaterial reality (e.g.

knowledge, truth, logic, language, desire, beauty, value) from our physical reality (e.g.

atoms, brains, hearts, galaxies, paintings, nuclear weapons).

In other words, to address both sides of Searle’s question, we need not look

beyond the natural world. In a precisely metamodern articulation, Searle quotes fellow

philosopher Donald Davidson as saying, “we live in one world, at most” (Searle, 2014).

Notwithstanding, the misconceptions about science and naturalism pose obstacles for

                                                                                                               11  I  refer  here  to  the  traditional  notion  that  “for  some  particular  domain,  there  are  two  fundamental  kinds  or  categories  of  things  or  principles”  (Robinson,  2003),  e.g.  mind/body,  art/science,  good/evil,  et  al.  

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the metamodern (wo)man who wishes to express a reverential awe at the wonders of

science and the mysteries of life, mind, and cosmos, while dispensing entirely with the

language of ‘God, the soul, and immortality.’ Consequently, the term ‘spirituality’ can be

useful but problematic.

Derived from the Latin word spiritus, the original meaning of the term ‘spirit’ had

clear and immediate religious connotations, and was used to describe "the breath of a

god" (Etymonline.com, n.d.), considered in the ancient world to be the "animating or vital

principle in man and animals” (Etymonline.com, n.d.). From around the fourteenth

century, when Christian supremacy in the West had reached its zenith, these religious

overtones had become even more pronounced as the generally accepted definition

evolved into:

"Divine substance, divine mind, God;" also "Christ" or His divine nature; "the Holy

Ghost; divine power;" also, "extension of divine power to man; inspiration, a

charismatic state; charismatic power, especially of prophecy" (Etymonline.com,

n.d.).

Accordingly, if we acknowledge the etymology of the term and recognize the

ways that it continues to be used in religious contexts, there is an intellectual tension that

demands resolution. A first step in resolving this tension is to more narrowly define

‘religion’ and ‘spirituality,’ as art historian and critic James Elkins does at the outset of his

book, The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Elkins distinguishes

‘spirituality’ as:

“…any system of belief that is private, subjective, largely or wholly

incommunicable, often wordless, and sometimes even uncognized. Spirituality in

this sense can be part religious, but not its whole” (Elkins, 2004, p.6).

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In these terms, more palatable for the mystic and naturalist alike, it becomes less

risky to conflate ‘spirituality’ with the incommunicable feeling of “awed wonder that

science can give us” as described by Richard Dawkins in the preface to Unweaving the

Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder (2006, p.x). This feeling does

not exclude, but rather demands, an awareness and appreciation of the illimitable

mysteries that lie beyond the realm of our current knowledge, and the power of those

subjective feelings of transcendence that are common to the human experience.

Other noted scientists have also used the term ‘spiritual’ in their own poetically-

crafted writings about this ‘sense of wonder,’ including acclaimed science

communicators like astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sagan, a

beloved figure known to the public as a “cosmic sage” and “hopeless romantic” (Popova,

n.d.), went to great lengths in his popular writing to argue that there is no reason to think

that science and spirituality are diametrically opposed (Popova, n.d.). In The Demon-

Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he says:

“Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word

“spiritual” that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter

of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science. On

occasion, I will feel free to use the word. Science is not only compatible with

spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in

an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the

intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of

elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the

presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless

courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion

that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to

both” (Sagan, 1996, p.29).

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Tyson expounds on this idea further in the preface to Lynn Gamwell’s

documentation of the developments in art and science over the past two centuries,

Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and Spirtuality (2002, p.7):

“Just as religious and mythological sources had thoroughly influenced art before

and during the Renaissance, so countless artists are now being moved by the

need to capture the complexities and mysteries of the physical universe on film,

in dance, and on canvas. The theories of modern science will, I predict, prove

limitless in their potential to inspire human emotion and unbridled wonder. Artists

can now count among their many muses the secrets of the universe.”

Here, the language Tyson uses is hardly that of ‘atoms’ and ‘brains.’ Instead, he speaks

of the importance, particularly to artists, of “emotion” and “being moved,” far more

characteristic of the Romantic than of the reductionist. Moreover, if we can designate

romanticism12 to be generally associated with a sensibility that places emphasis on

exaltation, imagination, and self-realization, then I believe we can best interpret the

speech of Dawkins, Sagan, and Tyson as an expression of what I will call romantic

naturalism — the veneration of our natural reality in both its subjective and objective

manifestations, along with, as Vermeulen and van den Akker (2010, p.8) phrase it, a

desire to “turn the finite into the infinite, while recognizing that it can never be realized.”

By conjointly adopting a kind of “oppositional consciousness’” (Mansbridge and Morris,

2001) and oscillating between the poles of ‘science and spirituality’, ‘reason and

romanticism’, ‘the objective and subjective’, the romantic naturalist (and likewise the

metamodernist) is hence able to have her cake and eat it too.

                                                                                                               12  I  acknowledge  that  this  term  has  a  complex  history  and  can  be  highly  contentious;  therefore,  for  the  purposes  of  this  essay,  I  seek  only  to  use  it  in  the  manner  in  which  I  have  defined.  

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FIG. 1 Contact (2014), Olafur Eliasson

It is in this vein of romantic naturalism that Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson

has been working for the past decade. With his large-scale installation art and

sculptures, which utilize such elemental materials as light, water, and air [temperature],

Eliasson explores the poetic connections between art and science, as well as what the

artist calls “that which lies at the edge of our senses and knowledge, of our imagination

and our expectations” (Press Kit, Olafur Eliasson: Contact, 2014, p.2).

In his latest work, ‘Contact’ [Fig. 1-2], at the newly opened Frank Gehry-designed

Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Eliasson has constructed a “cosmos” of grand spaces

and optical devices that he claims “is about the horizon that divides, for each of us, the

known from the unknown” (Press Kit, p.2). In many ways, ‘Contact,’ which acts as the

centrepiece for the larger exhibition, echoes the ancient mythological concept of the

Centre of the World, inviting viewers into a semi-circular chamber where “the constant

oscillation between shadow/light, presence/absence, and affirmation/doubt causes

[viewers] to question [their] visual perceptions and, in consequence, [their] convictions”

(Press Kit, p.3). As the press release explains:

“…the route through the exhibition is derived from the geometry of the circle and

founded upon the underlying principle of circularity. By bringing viewers into

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“contact” with a meteorite, an extraterrestrial object with a magical, even

symbolic, character, the exhibition begins with a gesture intended by the artist to

place visitors in a state of perceptiveness that expands the “horizons of our

imagination” (Press Kit, p.3).

Eliasson’s attempt to “bring in the universe” as “a total work of art’ (Press Kit, p.3)

is intended to provide a dramatic way of way of looking into the future (Press Kit, p.3),

and serves as a method of highlighting the relationship of the human mind to the larger

cosmos. Thus, ‘Contact’ attempts to alleviate the tension between conception (mind) and

knowledge (cosmos) by encompassing their distinctions within a larger

‘interconnectedness.’ In an extended interview with Laurence Bossé and Hans Ulrich

Obrist, the artist says:

“It is about everything being interconnected. Thinking of everything as being

connected to everything else offers us a way to reconsider the system we live in;

a system which otherwise favours highly individualistic, consumer-driven

principles” (Press Kit, p.7).

This concept of the ‘interconnectedness’ or ‘unity’ of reality is one with an ancient

lineage, and remains a central theme in both modern philosophy and science,

particularly in contemporary physics. As a clarified notion, it can be traced back to the

Greek philosopher Pythagoras (Ferguson, 2010, p.50), for whom:

“…all philosophy and inquiry – and all use of the powers of reason and

observation to gain an understanding of nature, human nature, the world, the

cosmos, including what would later be called ‘science’ – was linked with, indeed

was … the most exalted living-out of the doctrine of the ‘unity of all being’”

(Ferguson, 2010, p.54).

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Bearing this in mind, if we consent to the most basic characterization of modernism as

that of utopism, absolutes, and the exaltation of Reason, then surely this is a description

of an earlier form.

In the postmodern vernacular, however, this constructive notion of

‘interconnectedness’ is replaced by an emphasis on deconstruction and discord (Mul,

1999, pp 18-26), where we are told that relationships – especially in the sciences of

mind and cosmos – are simply too complex to ever be unified into the “grand narratives”

(Lyotard, 1984) of which Eliasson’s work suggests. Whereas contemporary upholders of

modernism, such as historian David Christian and quantum physicist David Deutsch, tell

the story of how we got from “electrons to elections” and “protons to presidents” (Searle,

2014) in an all-encompassing, unbroken narrative from the Big Bang to the present,

postmodern theorists such as Jencks, distrustful of such metanarratives, characterize

the scientific story of cosmogenesis13 as merely a useful “metaphorical web” (Jencks

2007, p.179).

In contrast, the metamodernist and the metamodern artwork such as ‘Contact’

seek to negotiate both of these positions by wavering between expressions of ‘unity’ and

‘fragmentation.’ After first alluding to ‘interconnectedness,’ Eliasson goes on to speak of

how he hopes the artwork will affect the individual viewer:

“I would like to encourage visitors to think of themselves as if they were

asteroids; to feel themselves floating through the space, meeting the artworks,

meeting other visitors, and seeing them fly by. I want visitors to enjoy this

temporal sequence and to try to take ownership of it by gradually slowing it down

or speeding it up. It is about feeling your own presence, taking charts of your own

trajectory, your own orbit, in your new “asteroid” self” (Press Kit, p.9).

                                                                                                               13  The  origin  or  evolution  of  the  universe  (Oxforddictionaries.com).    

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So, not only does the artist intend for the artwork to call attention to the aesthetic

beauty of the sun, the stars, and the universe (i.e. material entities of the objective

realm14), but he also directs our contemplation toward the subjectivity inherent in our

own perceptions as we float aimlessly through space and time.

In ‘Contact,’ and in the example to follow, these oscillating tensions —

reason/romanticism, science/myth, known/unknown, objective/subjective,

unity/fragmentation — seek conciliation not by adopting the ontology of “postmodern in-

betweenness” (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010, p.10) (a neither-nor), but through

what Jencks refers to as a kind of ‘bipolar unification’ (Jencks 2007, pp 193) (a both-

neither)15.

The question thus becomes, can an artwork, even one as layered and ethereal

as Eliasson’s immense installation, be said to answer Searle’s question — to truly

succeed in unifying these opposing poles? Or is it rather that the metamodern practice

sets out to fulfil an ambition that it knows that it will never, can never, and should never

                                                                                                               14  A  manifestation  of  nature  that  exists  entirely  independent  of  our  perceptions  or  representations  of  it.    15  This  is  meant  to  distinguish  the  metamodern  ontology  and  epistemology  as  being  “each  at  once  modern  and  postmodern  and  neither  of  them”  (Vermeulen  and  van  den  Akker,  2010,  p.6).  

FIG. 2 Contact (2014), Olafur Eliasson

FIG. 2 Eliasson’s installation seeks to reconcile numerous dualities, eg. reason/romanticism, science/myth, known/unknown, objective/subjective, unity/fragmentation, et al.  

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satisfy (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010, p.8)? In what follows, I will address these

questions by looking at another artwork that suitably embodies the metamodernist’s ‘as

if’ epistemology.

2 The Metamodern Epistemology - Kant’s ‘as if’

In their essay Notes on Metamodernism, Vermeulen and van den Akker (2010,

p.5) claim that at our present historical moment, “…artists ... are formulating anew a

narrative of longing structured by and conditioned on a belief that was long repressed,

for a possibility that was long forgotten.” In other words, if the ideas and ideals of the

modern worldview might be described as “fanatic and/or naïve” (Vermeulen and van den

Akker, 2010, p.5), and the postmodern position as that of ‘apathy and/or radical

scepticism’, the philosophy of the metamodern can be understood best as a kind of

“informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism” (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010, p.5).

Faced with the rising threats of climate change, economic instability, religious

fundamentalism, and a weakened political centre, yet increasingly rewarded with the

fruits of science and technology, the current generation of artists are simultaneously

challenged with uncertainty and inspired toward reflection, inciting “a move forward out

of the postmodern and into the metamodern” (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010, p.5).

Apparently, when postmodern thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama triumphantly

announced “The End of History” (Fukuyama, 1992) with the “universalization of Western

liberal democracy” (Fukuyama, 1992, p.3), or when others suggested that it had come to

an end “because people realized its purpose could never be fulfilled” (Vermeulen and

van den Akker, p.5), their arguments — based on Hegel’s “positive” idealism16

(Vermeulen and van den Akker, p.5) — did not anticipate the unpredictable cultural shifts

                                                                                                               16  Generally  defined  as  a  notion  of  history  that  dialectically  progresses  toward  a  predetermined  purpose  in  the  material  world  (Vermeulen  and  van  den  Akker,  2010,  p.5).      

  14  

and scientific developments that would precipitate the need for a move beyond

postmodern concepts. In the present, though the metamodern discourse abandons

teleological accounts of history, sincere in the acknowledgement that there is indeed no

historical ‘purpose’ to be fulfilled, it contrarily proceeds ‘as if’ some Telos17 does exist.

Vermeulen and van den Akker (2010, p.5) explain this by stating:

“Inspired by a modern naivete yet informed by postmodern skepticism, the

metamodern discourse consciously commits itself to an impossible impossibility

… it seeks forever a truth that it never expects to find.”

Accordingly, we can cast the metamodern epistemology in the light of Kant’s “negative”

idealism, which views history as if it were a ‘grand narrative’ of humankind’s

advancement. Kant himself uses this language of ‘as if’ when he writes, “[e]ach …

people, as if following some guided thread, go toward a natural but to each of them

unknown goal” (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010, cited on p.5). In other words, we

are not moving toward some natural or unapprehended goal that may be said to truly

exist, but we pretend that we do in order to make progress, whether artistically, morally,

politically, or scientifically.

Not only do I find this epistemology appropriate to the metamodern artist —

particularly one that is inclined toward deep philosophical problems like the reconciliation

of oppositions, or to the romantic naturalist who has an ‘awe and wonder of science’ yet

is still drawn toward ambiguity, mystery, and ‘the great unknown’ — but it is, I believe,

analogous to the attitude expressed by many cosmologists and physicists when they

speak in the terms of a ‘unification in nature’, a ‘grand synthesis’, or ‘Theories of

Everything’ (Weinberg, 1992; Greene, 1999; Hawking and Mlodniow, 2010). When

                                                                                                               17  Some  ultimate  aim  or  objective  (Oxforddictionaries.com).  

  15  

eminent theoretical physicists like Brian Greene18 and Nobel laureates such as Stephen

Weinberg19 wax poetic in their grandest claims about M-Theory or String Theory,

assuring us that science is on the verge of answering all of our age-old questions about

life, mind and cosmos, and transforming us into Jedi-like “Masters of Space and Time”

(Kaku, 2011), they are hardly unaware of the unresolved problems that would remain

unattended if some elegant equation that unified General Relativity and Quantum Theory

were produced tomorrow20.

It seems less appropriate to respond to the language of “final theories” (Weinberg

1992, p.232) and ‘ultimate unification’ with the postmodern charge of scientism, and

more useful to interpret it in the terms of the ‘as if’ epistemology and romantic naturalism

that I’ve described. Although science is often misunderstood as merely a ‘body of facts,’

it is more accurate to portray the scientific project as being a romantic pursuit, one

predicated on both mystery and desire. Its driving force is neither a “cold philosophy”

(Keats, 1990) nor a ‘vulgar reductionism’, but is the same longing of the artist, poet,

philosopher or mystic to reconcile Searle’s dilemma, or at least to make some sense of

it. Science proceeds as if there “exists a reality that is totally independent of our

representations of it” (Searle, 2014), and that ‘that reality is intelligible’ (Deutsch, 2010;

Pinker, 2013), because it is a methodology that has produced overwhelming results, but

that it rests on these assumptions is no reason to dismiss it as “simplistic” or “naïve”

(Pinker, 2013). When Brian Greene writes the following, I contend that he does not do so

in the ‘absolutes’ that postmodernists find so appalling, but in the metamodern language

of romantic naturalism:

                                                                                                               18  “String  theory  has  the  potential  to  show  that  all  of  the  wondrous  happenings  in  the  universe  –  from  the  frantic  dance  of  subatomic  quarks  to  the  stately  waltz  of  orbiting  binary  stars;  from  the  primordial  fireball  of  the  big  bang  to  the  majestic  swirl  of  heavenly  galaxies  –  are  reflections  of  one,  grand  physical  principle,  one  master  equation”  (Greene,  1999,  p.5).    19  “If  history  is  any  guide  at  all,  it  seems  to  me  to  suggest  that  there  is  a  final  theory.  In  this  century  we  have  seen  the  convergence  of  the  arrows  of  explanation,  like  the  convergence  of  the  meridians  toward  the  North  Pole”  (Weinberg,  1992,  p.232).    20  One  of  the  primary  requirements  for  a  Grand  Unifying  Theory  (Achinstein  2014).  

  16  

“We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the

underdog pressing onward against seemingly insurmountable odds. We all, in

one form or another, are trying to make sense of the world around us. And all of

these elements lie at the core of modern physics. The story is among the

grandest — the unfolding of the entire universe; the mystery is among the

toughest — finding out how the cosmos came to be; the odds are among the

most daunting — bipeds, newly arrived by cosmic time scales trying to reveal the

secrets of the ages; and the quest is among the deepest — the search for

fundamental laws to explain all we see and beyond, from the tiniest particles to

the most distant galaxies” (Greene, 2003, p.ix).

Perhaps it is these ‘good stories’ and ‘tantalizing mysteries’ of modern physics

that so often attract the metamodern artist. Take, for example, ‘Tom Na H-iu II’ [Fig. 3-4],

a 2006 work by celebrated Japanese artist, Mariko

Mori. This 4.5-metre-high biomorphically-shaped

glass and stainless steel monolith rises from the

gallery floor like an ethereal celestial globule, alluding

with its ambiguous form and soft LED-lit bursts of

colour to distant cosmic events such as the birth and

death of stars, galaxies, or superclusters (Austen,

2013). Both aesthetically, and as expressed by the

principles of singularity symbolized by the monolith,

the piece itself is strikingly simple, and one might assume that the power and reach of

such a work lies principally in its infinite capacity for subjective interpretation by an

imaginative viewer.

FIG. 3 Tom Na H-iu II (2006), Mariko Mori  

  17  

Indeed, the title of the piece is meant to evoke an emotional and/or spiritual

response, as it is a term “derived from the Celtic word for a site, marked by standing

stones, where, it was believed that souls could re-enter the earth from the spirit world

after death” (The Economist, 2012). However, despite the mystical and protean concepts

that the artwork suggests, there is a genuine scientific actuality that anchors this piece.

For the swaths of light emitted from the stone are in fact those of neutrinos, subatomic

particles which rarely interact with normal matter, as they are detected at the Super-

Kamiokande observatory at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Cosmic Ray Research

in Japan (Austen, 2013).

The sculpture uses a live feed to transmute incoming data from the Japanese

facility into a variety of ghostly hues that reflect the different particles as they are

captured in a huge water tank [Fig. 5]: a pale pink represents the elusive muon - an

unstable subatomic particle of the same class as an electron, which make up much of

FIG. 4 Mori’s monolith is unapologetically both ironic and sincere, as the piece attempts to present scientific data with an ambience of mystery and the ‘known’ with the seemliness of the ‘unknown.’  

  18  

the cosmic radiation that reaches the earth’s

surface - and a kaleidoscope of colours,

echoing those we have become accustomed

to seeing in photographs taken by the Hubble

telescope, represent neutrino bursts from the

explosions of distant supernovas (Austen,

2013). Therefore, it is only with an

understanding and appreciation of both the scientific facts and mythological fictions that

inform the piece that such an artwork can be both felt and known.

In Mori’s sculpture, we are again able to apprehend a number of oscillating

tensions. On the one side, we have notions traditionally corresponding to the subjective

realm (mythology, spirituality, aesthetic judgment), and on the other, those synonymous

with the objective (related to the physical sciences). Self-aware and unabashed of these

polarities, the artist nevertheless strives for the ‘impossible possibility’ of achieving their

unification. This is how the metamodern artist gives answer to Searle’s question. She

does so neither with the modernist’s militant conviction and sincerity, nor with the

postmodernist’s submissive irony and indecision, but by giving both attitudes resonance

through a single artistic expression. She wishes only to extend the inquiry, rather than

end it.

In her own words, ‘Tom Na H-iu II’ aims to draw viewers toward what she refers

to as a “deeper consciousness,” which occurs when one “acknowledges your life, other

living beings, atoms, and subatomic particles. Those things are all here in our bodies. I

try to visualize how we are connected in the physical world from the very small primal

particles to a greater universe" (Austen, 2013). So, while the scientists at the Cosmic

Ray Research Centre and facilities like the CERN laboratory in Geneva seek to describe

the physical laws that explain both cosmic and human existence, and to discover the

FIG. 5 Super Kamiokande. Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research), Japan  

  19  

fundamental entities on which our reality is built, artists like Mori are attempting to

visualize these bewildering scientific truths, and to unveil their emotional, psychological,

and spiritual value.

Utilizing typically postmodern conceptions of ‘inner experience’ and multiplicity,

while also exhibiting a modernist zeal for abstraction and an affinity for subjects related

to ‘universalizing theories’ (Deutsch, 2010), artists like Mori embrace an ebb and flow of

strategies that are bound both to desire and to indifference — the desire that is intrinsic

to the human condition, and the indifference of the universe to human affairs.

Accordingly, their work often attempts to illuminate what neither modernism or

postmodernism, nor the ancient religions or modern science have ever been able to

accurately render in their own terms — the sublime, transcendent, supranatural, or

mysterious.

There are, of course, inherent dangers to all this talk of ‘spirituality’ and ‘mystery,’

especially when the discourse attempts to situate either with modern science and/or

contemporary art. On the one hand, though science does depend on mysterious

questions, it does not accept mystical answers. Due to the subjective nature of the

creation and interpretation of all works of art, any visual depiction of the supranormal can

easily be misread or misrepresented as the supernatural (particularly in postmodern

discourse), allowing metaphysical conjecture and bad explanations21 a window of

opportunity to distort the aims, methods, and findings of legitimate science22. Our

human desires make it all too tempting to give the mysterious a name, and our language

of reverence and awe are too hastily co-opted by ideologues and propaganda ministries

                                                                                                               21 “Good/bad explanations: An explanation that is hard/easy to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for.” (Deutsch, 2010, Loc 586) 22 As opposed to pseudo-science. According to philosopher of science Karl Popper, the demarcation between science and non-science depends in large part on falsifiability. SEE Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), and Conjectures and Refutations (1962).  

  20  

to be manipulated for the sake of political and religious agendas. As a result, in works

such as Mori’s, conflations of the spiritual and scientific could possibly lead to

pseudoscientific interpretations, which, in turn, might further fuel the public

misunderstanding of scientific logic and methodology.

Furthermore, as objects of fine art, creations such as ‘Contact’ and ‘Tom Na H-iu

II’ must tread carefully not to fall back into the realm of modernist kitsch. To much of the

contemporary art world, the sincerity and sentimentality of these works could be seen as

too saccharine, too naive, or lacking in ambiguity and self-criticism. In an era still heavily

influenced by the postmodern obsession with irony and detachment, one can read a kind

of piety expressed in these works that cynical critics might dismiss as merely an

unsophisticated expression of some moth-eaten modernist faith (the dreaded ‘science as

religion’ hobgoblin). As Elkins states, “The excision of piety and faith from art has deep

roots and is entangled with the very ideas of modernism and postmodernism” (Elkins,

2004, p.47). In the art world (or the intellectual world, in general), this manifests itself as

an institutional distrust when artists or academics attempt to conflate naturalism with any

notions of ‘the spiritual,’ even in the term’s most secular use (The Economist, 2012;

Elkins, 2004, p.47).

I find this scepticism to be justifiable, and I believe it is only through the

explanation and expression of metamodernism’s distinct ontology and epistemology that

such wariness can be assuaged. What the metamodern artwork does most successfully

is attempt to devise a language that might appraise and describe “what is going on

around us” (TimotheusVermeulen.com, n.d.) in the arts and humanities as much as in

science. What I hope to have shown is that, by pledging no allegiance to either our

humanist or empirical traditions, the metamodern artwork is able to form a bridge,

however fragile, between modes of thought that are presented as having become

increasingly distanced since the time of the Enlightenment.

  21  

3 Conclusion

In an essay written in 1991, Science as Solidarity, notable pragmatist and

postmodern philosopher Richard Rorty expressed a wish that our “new rhetoric would

draw more on the vocabulary of Romantic poetry and socialist politics, and less on

Greek metaphysics, religious morality, or Enlightenment scienticism” (Rorty, 1991, p.44).

What I have attempted to show in this essay is that in the present, artists like Eliasson

and Mori, philosophers like Pinker and Searle, and scientists like Tyson and Green, all

seem to be expressing a desire to demote neither side of the dichotomy. They instead

represent a certain ‘structure of feeling’ constituted by a move to what I’ve called

romantic naturalism, and described by Vermeulen and van den Akker as

metamodernism. I claim that this cosmogonic posture is one constituted by the deep

philosophical problems of our time — What is consciousness? What are the implications

of quantum theory? How are we to make sense of bizarre notions like String Theory,

artificial intelligence, or “rainbow” universes23 (Moskowitz, 2013)? And just what do

these quarks and bosons and genes and neurons have to tell us about art, love, passion

and solidarity — or vice versa?

In seeking the answers to these difficult questions, rather than devolving into

zealotry or surrendering to nihilism, the metamodernist oscillates between “a modern

enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naiveté

and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation,

purity and ambiguity” (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010, pp 5-6). This strategy allows

the metamodern artist the freedom and epistemic confidence to aim for in the fine arts

what the philosopher Karl Popper wished for in science - a vigorously fomented

“permanent revolution” (Popper, 1962). In this forward-moving ‘bipolar state of unity,’

                                                                                                               23  The  theory  of  universes  in  which  “gravity's  effects  on  spacetime  are  felt  differently  by  different  wavelengths  of  light,  aka  different  colors  in  the  rainbow”  (Moskowitz,  2013).  

  22  

artists like Elliason and Mori are able to enter into a dialogue that extends through the

studio to the laboratory, and reaches across all branches of thought, from the humanities

to the natural sciences.

So, if we return to the initial question of whether a work of art could ultimately

resolve the contradiction Searle poses between ‘the facts of modern science and our

traditional self-representations,’ I believe there are two ways we might answer this. The

first and obvious answer is no. If there are absolute answers to the most unfathomable

mysteries of our existence, neither our best works of art, nor our most sophisticated

arguments or experiments are ready to provide them, for as we have seen, as our

knowledge grows, the world only becomes stranger. Metamodernists, however, revel in

this fact, and they attempt to give it representation in artworks, books, films and new

media, as a way to return to our present the sens that postmodernism too hastily tried to

sweep away. They search for truths wherever they may be, with the knowingness that

they are there, but without ever expecting to find them. While the physicist’s dream of a

Theory of Everything or the artist’s desire to ‘render the unknown’ might be nothing more

than simulacrum24 or comfortable illusion, the metamodern (wo)man understands that

striving for impossibilities of this kind can (and does) lead to new artistic and scientific

insights25.

                                                                                                               24  I  use  the  term  here  in  the  limited  sense  of  being  “an  unsatisfactory  imitation  or  substitute”  (Oxforddictionaries.com).      25  Brian  Greene  demonstrates  this  belief  when  he  says,  “If  you  were  to  ask  me  ‘do  I  believe  in  string  theory?’,  my  answer  today  would  be…’no.’  …  I  only  believe  in  things  that  are  experimentally  proven  or  observationally  proven.  Do  I  think  string  theory  is  one  of  our  best  approaches  to  putting  gravity  and  quantum  mechanics  together?  I  do,  and  the  progress  over  the  last  ten  years  has  only  solidified  my  confidence  that  this  is  a  worthwhile  direction  to  pursue”  (2011  Isaac  Asimov  Debate:  The  Theory  of  Everything,  2011).    

  23  

With this understanding in hand, I believe we

can say that whether or not ‘Contact’ and ‘Tom Na

H-iu II’ are successfully able to resolve the strain

between ‘art and science’ or ‘culture and nature’,

they are certainly able to present it. In their efforts to

enigmatise science and present the objective as the

ethereal, these works, like others that the

constraints of this essay have prevented me from

mentioning — the interactive digital animations by

Matthew Ritchie [Fig. 6], the poetic abstractions of

Tacita Dean [Fig. 7], and the orbital imagery painted

by David Row [Fig. 8], to name just a few — are

able to fulfil their mission of effectively visualising

some of the most significant quandaries of our time.

If Searle is correct that the tension between

humanness (self-conceptions) and nature

(knowledge) is indeed “the central problem of

intellectual life today,” then these works of art can be

appreciated for their attempt to express such an excruciatingly complex double-bind, if

for no other reason.

Although I can make no wholesale prescription for the adoption of these views,

my research has led me to conclude that this is at present the most intellectually

  24  

satisfying approach to finding consilience26 between the arts and sciences. I believe that

the metamodern discourse is one that could conceivably be extended into multiple

branches of philosophy, and would be a useful perspective to explore in terms of its

broader relations and implications to fields such as cultural theory, literary criticism,

ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy and the philosophy of science. Clearly it is my

opinion that those engaged in interdisciplinary practices such as ‘art and science’ could

benefit from an analysis of Vermeulen and van den Akker’s essay, as it has undeniably

contributed to the development of my own practice and research.

I conclude that it is precisely this metamodern ‘structure of feeling’ that I have

described which largely informs my own artistic practice [Fig. 9-10], and I also believe

that it is the strategies of metamodernism (as outlined by Vermeulen and van den Akker)

which act as the guiding methodology that I aspire to develop further through continued

research and creative experimentation. Counting myself amongst the growing number of

                                                                                                               26  “Agreement  between  the  approaches  to  a  topic  of  different  academic  subjects,  especially  science  and  the  humanities”  (Oxforddictionaries.com).  

FIG. 9 Metamodern landscape (2015), Jared Vaughan Davis  

  25  

artists that take the complexities and mysteries of the universe as their muse, I can only

look forward with tempered optimism to following the theories and developments within

art, philosophy and science that might expound on the ideas of this essay, and serve as

critical strategies for hastening interdisciplinary development in these fields.

Like the metamodern scholars, artists, speculative philosophers, and theoretical

physicists who each seek to ‘reconcile the irreconcilable’ in their own unique fields of

inquiry, I maintain, with a pragmatic idealism, that equipped with our maturing

knowledge, the romantic spirit of science, and a restrained (yet unrestrainable) ardour,

this intellectual journey might serve as a unifying basis for better understanding the vast

complexities of our natural world.

FIG. 10 Illusion of the Self (2015), MA Degree Show work in progress, Jared Vaughan Davis    

  26  

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http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21568691-irritating-exploration-ancient-and-modern-cosmology-bus-tour [Accessed 2 Jan. 2015].

TimotheusVermeulen.com, (n.d.). Cher Potter talks to Timotheus Vermeulen. [online]

Available at: http://timotheusvermeulen.com/post/100084961566/cher-potter-talks-to-timotheus-vermeulen [Accessed 4 Apr. 2015].

Vermeulen, T. and van den Akker, R. (2010). Notes on metamodernism. Journal of

AESTHETICS & CULTURE, 2(0). Weinberg, S. (1992). Dreams of A Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books.

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IMAGE CREDITS

Fig. 1 Contact (2014), Olafur Eliasson. http://www.dezeen.com/2014/12/16/olafur-eliassons-immersive-light-installations-inhabit-gehrys-fondation-louis-vuitton/ [Accessed 5 Jan. 2015] Fig. 2 Contact (2014), Olafur Eliasson. http://www.dezeen.com/2014/12/16/olafur-eliassons-immersive-light-installations-inhabit-gehrys-fondation-louis-vuitton/ [Accessed 5 Jan. 2015] Fig. 3 Tom Na H-iu II (2006), Markio Mori. Mixed media 327.6 x 115.4 x 39.8 cm. Photo by: Richard Learoyd. http://www.scaithebathhouse.com/en/exhibitions/2006/ 04/mariko_mori_tom_na_h-iu/ [Accessed 5 Jan. 2014] Fig. 4 Tom Na H-iu II (2006), Markio Mori. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/visualarts/article3627917.ece [Accessed 5 Jan. 2014] Fig. 5 Super Kamiokande. From the upper of the tank (Jun.26, 2006) © Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research). http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/utokyo-research/feature-stories/3281-feet-under/ [Accessed 5 Jan. 2015] Fig. 6 Day One (2008), Matthew Ritchie. Installation view: Interactive digital animation with acrylic and marker on wall. Jewish Museum in San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis, June 8, 2008 – January 4, 2009. Photo by Bruce Damonte. http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/matthew-ritchie/images#andquotday-oneandquot-2008 [Accessed 5 Jan. 2015] Fig. 7 Fatigues (2012), Tacita Dean. Chalk mural. On show at Documenta 13. Photograph courtesy the artist/Nils Klinger. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign /2012/dec/17/best-art-2012-documenta-13 [Accessed 19 March 2015] Fig. 8 Mixed Up (2006-2007), David Row. Screen print on Coventry. Holly Johnson Gallery. http://www.hollyjohnsongallery.com/html/Detail.asp?WorkInvNum=3012& whatpage=artist [Accessed 19 March 2015] Fig. 9 Metamodern Landscape (2015), Jared Vaughan Davis. Digital image courtesy of the artist. Fig. 10 Illusion of the self (2015), MA Degree Show work in progress. Jared Vaughan Davis. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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APPENDIX

METAMODERNIST // MANIFESTO (Turner, 2011) 1. We recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world. 2. We must liberate ourselves from the inertia resulting from a century of modernist ideological naivety and the cynical insincerity of its antonymous bastard child. 3. Movement shall henceforth be enabled by way of an oscillation between positions, with diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities of a colossal electric machine, propelling the world into action. 4. We acknowledge the limitations inherent to all movement and experience, and the futility of any attempt to transcend the boundaries set forth therein. The essential incompleteness of a system should necessitate an adherence, not in order to achieve a given end or be slaves to its course, but rather perchance to glimpse by proxy some hidden exteriority. Existence is enriched if we set about our task as if those limits might be exceeded, for such action unfolds the world. 5. All things are caught within the irrevocable slide towards a state of maximum entropic dissemblance. Artistic creation is contingent upon the origination or revelation of difference therein. Affect at its zenith is the unmediated experience of difference in itself. It must be art’s role to explore the promise of its own paradoxical ambition by coaxing excess towards presence. 6. The present is a symptom of the twin birth of immediacy and obsolescence. Today, we are nostalgists as much as we are futurists. The new technology enables the simultaneous experience and enactment of events from a multiplicity of positions. Far from signalling its demise, these emergent networks facilitate the democratisation of history, illuminating the forking paths along which its grand narratives may navigate the here and now. 7. Just as science strives for poetic elegance, artists might assume a quest for truth. All information is grounds for knowledge, whether empirical or aphoristic, no matter its truth-value. We should embrace the scientific-poetic synthesis and informed naivety of a magical realism. Error breeds sense. 8. We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus, metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and elusive horizons. We must go forth and oscillate! Turner, Luke. 'Metamodernist // Manifesto'. Metamodernist // Manifesto. N.p., 2011.

Web. [Accessed 20 Dec. 2014]