So That’s It Then?
During recent sessions, members of the Year 9 Athenaeum have been considering how some theories that had been accepted for a long time became challenged, and how, in other cases, theories emerged where none had existed before.
The initial examples were drawn from the world of geology. The students looked at one of the giants of 19th-century geology, Sir Roderick Murchison. He dominated the Royal Geographical Society and supported the view that, when looking at a layer of exposed rock, the youngest layers would be found at the top. This view was challenged in a specific case in the Highlands of Scotland, where Charles Lapworth and others showed that a particular layer of rock was not in its original place, but had been caused by a gigantic system of dislocations whereby successive masses of the oldest rocks had been exhumed from below and thrust over the younger formations.
The students were amazed to discover that, up until the 1960s, there was no coherent theory of plate tectonics—only various speculations about what forces might be at work. Then the new idea arrived in what philosophers of science like to call a paradigm shift.
Moving into the world of physics, the students learnt how the laws of Newton, which govern the world of larger objects, seem not to apply in the realm of the very small—the world of the quantum particle. The lesson ended with a short video explaining how quantum computers operate and how different they are from ordinary computers. The presenter explained that a quantum computer is not merely a more powerful version of a traditional computer, in the same way that a light bulb is not just a more powerful version of a candle—it operates in a fundamentally different way.
Then, following a shift of a different sort, the students turned their attention to art.
They began with Thomas Gainsborough’s painting Mr and Mrs Andrews (c.1750), considering what criteria might have been used, both at the time it was painted and today, to evaluate it. Their suggestions focused on composition, technique, colour and, perhaps most significantly for this exercise, realism. They then looked at Impression, Sunrise (1872) by Claude Monet, a painting credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement. Here the students felt that light and colour were of great importance, but that the painting was less realistic. They also discussed the atmosphere or feeling created by the work.
Moving on to The Starry Night (1889) by Vincent van Gogh, part of the Post-Impressionist movement, the students were struck by the power of the colours deployed. Realism, as understood in Gainsborough’s time, seemed to them to have little relevance.
The students were shocked by the next work, Brown, Red, Black (1959) by Mark Rothko, which seemed stripped of everything but colour. However, one or two began to talk about the feelings evoked in the viewer—and that, of course, was the key point. The meaning of this work, and of those by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin with which the class concluded, seems to lie increasingly in the response of the observer. This suggests that there is no single fixed meaning, and moreover that a work of art can, in a sense, live on in the experiences of all who view it. This idea—that the viewer or observer is crucial—is, of course, well known in the world of physics in something called the measurement problem, thus making a satisfying link to the final topic.
As a final exercise, the students were asked to identify what they regarded as the key features of a paradigm shift: “A revolution in the field”; “Wide impact”; “Key individuals”; “A fundamental shift in thinking”; “The original theory completely overturned”; “A change in many people’s perspectives.”
They certainly had the spirit of it all.
All these discussions helped the students to see that, within their lifetime, new theories will continue to emerge across many fields, and that some ideas accepted as “truth” today are likely to be subjected to major review as further paradigm shifts occur.
There was only time in the lesson to hint at Modernism’s enormous reach in cinema, science, and music — but that leaves, as the Modernists might approve of, plenty to look forward to!
