Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago
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0:01 - 0:02Okay.
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0:03 - 0:04You got the preview.
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0:05 - 0:08We think about things that are incomplete.
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0:08 - 0:09We think about the improbable,
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0:09 - 0:12maybe even the singular event,
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0:12 - 0:16and try to defend it
as having great importance, -
0:16 - 0:18potentially overriding importance.
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0:18 - 0:20We think about transitions.
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0:21 - 0:26We need to bridge the gap, as it were,
to understand what happened in the past. -
0:26 - 0:30We think about limits, extremes.
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0:34 - 0:37I try to define what I do,
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0:37 - 0:40and one phrase that I
come up with continually for - -
0:40 - 0:42especially when talking to younger kids -
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0:42 - 0:43is "adventure with a purpose."
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0:43 - 0:47That's what I felt when I walked
in that museum I told you I did. -
0:47 - 0:49I felt a sense of excitement.
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0:50 - 0:53The feeling of discovery was palpable.
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0:53 - 0:55It was wrapped up
with so many different things: -
0:55 - 0:57travel, science, art.
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0:58 - 1:01One thing that is a constant
in good science is hard work. -
1:01 - 1:03First, there's adventure -
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1:03 - 1:06this is someone crossing the Sahara
for the first time in their life - -
1:06 - 1:09and there's a sense
of playfulness about science. -
1:10 - 1:13This is your emcee
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1:13 - 1:15at a more arduous moment in her career.
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1:15 - 1:17There's hard work.
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1:17 - 1:19I don't care if you're
in a white lab coat in the Sahara - -
1:19 - 1:21a lot of hard work goes into science.
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1:21 - 1:25We didn't know how hot it was
because our thermometers only went to 125. -
1:25 - 1:26(Laughter)
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1:26 - 1:27And it may not be temperature.
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1:27 - 1:29It may be a jealous colleague.
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1:29 - 1:31It may be inadequate equipment.
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1:31 - 1:33There's all sorts of hurdles.
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1:33 - 1:36One thing it's likely
going to involve is teamwork. -
1:36 - 1:41And I couldn't have moved
the millions of pounds of earth -
1:41 - 1:43around here and there
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1:43 - 1:46without a lot of the eyes
and a lot of teamwork. -
1:46 - 1:48Where does it begin, my field?
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1:48 - 1:50Go to a place like this - Sahara.
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1:50 - 1:51Look at that.
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1:51 - 1:54There's a camp, if you've got
really good eyes, over there. -
1:54 - 1:55How do you find something?
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1:55 - 1:57How do you make a discovery
in paleontology? -
1:57 - 1:58You've got to see it,
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1:58 - 2:03but you can never see the whole thing.
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2:03 - 2:05If you see the whole thing,
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2:05 - 2:09then time has seen that whole thing
a lot before, long before you have -
2:09 - 2:11and it's fragmentary and eroded.
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2:11 - 2:15The best way to make a discovery
is to see the corner of something. -
2:15 - 2:18But then you have to visualize
what you can't see, -
2:18 - 2:22and these encyclopedic images
are passing through our head -
2:22 - 2:23time and time again.
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2:23 - 2:26Here we are, the early dinosaur beds.
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2:26 - 2:31And we're wondering
what it takes to make a discovery. -
2:31 - 2:32This one was made -
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2:33 - 2:37just a tooth or two
showing at the surface -
2:37 - 2:39before we realized
what we'd actually found. -
2:40 - 2:42I'm going to give you two examples of -
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2:43 - 2:46I'm going to take it this clock is off.
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2:46 - 2:48I'm going to go with my own wristwatch.
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2:48 - 2:49Okay.
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2:49 - 2:51I'm going to give you two examples -
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2:51 - 2:53one I just announced
and one we're working on - -
2:53 - 2:56to give you an idea
of what we're involved with. -
2:56 - 2:59We found this thing,
this early dinosaur, Eodromaeus. -
2:59 - 3:01Badlands - the middle
of absolutely nowhere. -
3:01 - 3:06Months, years it took to visualize
what this animal was about, -
3:06 - 3:09casting, molding
to properly communicate it, -
3:09 - 3:11to put it together,
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3:11 - 3:14to see it in three dimensions,
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3:14 - 3:15and ultimately,
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3:15 - 3:17to reconstruct it for the public.
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3:17 - 3:20This not purely whim,
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3:20 - 3:24but rather built on top of a cast
of the actual material, -
3:24 - 3:27following all the traces we could
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3:27 - 3:30to understand whether it was scaled,
feathered, bristled, whatever. -
3:30 - 3:33Here's another example -
what I'm going to come out with soon. -
3:33 - 3:35Here's the moment of discovery.
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3:35 - 3:38We couldn't see anywhere near
the whole skeleton, -
3:38 - 3:40but we felt we had something important.
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3:40 - 3:42And if we could turn these lights down -
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3:42 - 3:45you can see out there
better than I can see up here. -
3:45 - 3:48It's a little raptor of some kind.
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3:48 - 3:50Hind limbs like an emu,
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3:50 - 3:54forelimbs - and you see it,
they're twisting around - -
3:54 - 3:56like an armadillo or something that digs.
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3:56 - 3:57It's an "emorillo."
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3:57 - 4:00We don't have anything
like this living today. -
4:00 - 4:02How could you convince a scientist
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4:02 - 4:04that you've got something
that runs at lightning speed -
4:04 - 4:07and digs like an armadillo?
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4:07 - 4:08You really have to visualize it
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4:08 - 4:10to see what these things do and look like.
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4:10 - 4:12Now, my art began in high school.
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4:12 - 4:18I drew this, and psychologists
would call it "monocular depth cues." -
4:18 - 4:24I was good at shadow,
atmospheric effect, contrast - -
4:24 - 4:26all these things I didn't even know -
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4:26 - 4:27I was good at it.
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4:27 - 4:29This is my grandfather.
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4:29 - 4:30It turned me around.
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4:30 - 4:32I got into college not far from here.
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4:32 - 4:35This transition was difficult for me.
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4:35 - 4:37Understanding that art
could be something more, -
4:37 - 4:40that there was a meaning
beyond what was in front of your nose, -
4:40 - 4:42that imitating three dimensions
and two dimensions -
4:42 - 4:44was not the only thing,
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4:44 - 4:49that you could look at a life model
and see through to something inside, -
4:49 - 4:53to express something beyond
just what was in front of your nose -
4:53 - 4:54but at the essence of something.
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4:54 - 4:56I eventually gave up brushes
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4:56 - 5:00and decided that since art
is 30,000 years old as a record, -
5:00 - 5:01the first paintings,
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5:01 - 5:02these people didn't have canvas:
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5:02 - 5:06"I'm just going to try to get
to the essence of human form." -
5:06 - 5:09These people weren't doing
monocular depth cues -
5:09 - 5:10in what they were symbolizing.
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5:10 - 5:12It was something more important,
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5:12 - 5:15something essential about their lives
and the animals around them. -
5:15 - 5:19Eventually, tried to create
rock surfaces - carve into it, literally. -
5:19 - 5:21Gave up on brushes.
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5:21 - 5:24Now, this comes from a journal.
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5:24 - 5:28Niels Bohr was known to have said -
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5:28 - 5:29I see the time's going backwards -
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5:29 - 5:31Niels Bohr's known to have said
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5:32 - 5:35that cubism really influenced,
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5:35 - 5:37or it certainly helped him to understand
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5:38 - 5:41the particle, the wave - whatever
was going on, deep atomic structure. -
5:41 - 5:43This was written in a journal
very sympathetic: -
5:43 - 5:45"The Future of Science is Art?"
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5:45 - 5:47It's hard to believe
that a work of abstract art -
5:47 - 5:50might have actually affected
the history of science. -
5:50 - 5:53Cubism seems to have
nothing in common with modern physics. -
5:53 - 5:55When we think about
the scientific process, -
5:55 - 5:57a specific vocabulary comes to mind:
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5:57 - 5:59objectivity, experiments, facts.
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5:59 - 6:01In the passive tense
of the scientific paper, -
6:01 - 6:04we imagine a perfect reflection
of the real world. -
6:04 - 6:06And I put this in italics:
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6:06 - 6:10paintings can be profound,
but they are always pretend. -
6:10 - 6:15This, to me, fundamentally misunderstands
not only what science is about -
6:15 - 6:17but also what art is about.
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6:17 - 6:20Let me take you on a journey
of some of the discoveries I've made. -
6:20 - 6:24This site - I raised hundreds of thousands
of dollars and risked my career -
6:24 - 6:28to bring a team back to this spot
in the middle of the desert, -
6:28 - 6:29and all I could see at the surface
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6:29 - 6:31was that.
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6:31 - 6:33But I had an intuition,
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6:33 - 6:34and I had some facts
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6:34 - 6:37that led me to believe
much more was under the ground. -
6:37 - 6:40Students couldn't believe it:
"You came all the way back for this?" -
6:40 - 6:43When we dug, we came out
with tons and tons of bones. -
6:43 - 6:46That is not a single object;
that's a composite. -
6:46 - 6:48In reality, it doesn't exist.
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6:48 - 6:49It belongs to three or four skeletons.
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6:49 - 6:53This - no one had ever seen
a Spinosaur before. -
6:53 - 6:56We had to put together his skull
with the proportions of a crocodile. -
6:56 - 6:58It was so long it didn't look
like it belonged, -
6:58 - 7:02but we had to follow the bones,
follow our clues, and put it together. -
7:02 - 7:04This thing, this gigantic skull,
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7:04 - 7:07found - this is my wife -
on the cliffside of Morocco -
7:07 - 7:09at the edge of the Sahara desert,
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7:09 - 7:11came in hundreds of pieces.
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7:11 - 7:13We didn't even know
they belonged to the skull. -
7:13 - 7:18We certainly didn't imagine we had found -
even after taking it off the continent - -
7:18 - 7:20a gigantic, T-Rex-sized beast
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7:20 - 7:21until we put it all together.
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7:21 - 7:25This I had to visualize
with CAT scanning preparation -
7:25 - 7:27until I could ultimately understand
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7:27 - 7:29how the jaws of this animal
actually worked - -
7:29 - 7:34it came with a whole new way of chewing
for this dinosaurean nutcracker. -
7:34 - 7:37It wasn't chewing when I saw it.
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7:37 - 7:40How about this animal? A Mesozoic cow.
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7:40 - 7:42This reconstruction
really captures the notion -
7:42 - 7:46that this animal was, in fact,
with its muzzle, close to the ground. -
7:46 - 7:47It was so fragile.
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7:47 - 7:49We found the skull pulled apart.
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7:49 - 7:51We couldn't actually cast the pieces;
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7:51 - 7:53we had to CAT scan it, reflect it,
put it back together -
7:53 - 7:56until we could see the mug
of this thing for the first time. -
7:56 - 7:58And was it a shocker.
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7:59 - 8:02The endocast, the brain,
that doesn't exist either. -
8:02 - 8:06That's from the hollow inside the skull.
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8:06 - 8:11The ear region - reconstructed painfully
from slice after slice of CT scan. -
8:11 - 8:12How about this?
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8:12 - 8:16A giant crocodile -
its jaws on the ground. -
8:17 - 8:18Can you imagine the whole thing?
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8:18 - 8:20We didn't have the body; we had parts.
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8:20 - 8:21We went to modern crocodilians
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8:21 - 8:23to see how they scaled
when they got larger. -
8:23 - 8:25We had to capture the very largest ones
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8:25 - 8:30to realize what this animal
looked like 40 feet long. -
8:30 - 8:31This is supercroc.
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8:31 - 8:32What about its relatives?
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8:32 - 8:35This is more recent work, just out.
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8:35 - 8:37They had limbs that were upright.
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8:37 - 8:40I felt, likely, they were gallopers,
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8:40 - 8:46gallopers like this recent crocodile -
coming into the picture on the left - -
8:46 - 8:48Northern Australia, Darwin.
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8:48 - 8:51You have to watch your fingers
when you let these guys go. -
8:51 - 8:52But when they go, they go.
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8:52 - 8:55This is slow-speed film
of a galloping crocodile. -
8:55 - 8:58There was only one species
that gallops today - this is it - -
8:58 - 9:00under certain conditions.
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9:00 - 9:02And what shocked me to no end -
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9:04 - 9:06it was wonderful seeing this thing gallop.
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9:06 - 9:08It was the closest
I could get to my fossil. -
9:08 - 9:10But what it did when it hit the water
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9:10 - 9:12shocked me:
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9:12 - 9:14it turned into a fish, side to side.
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9:14 - 9:16And I realized what I was looking at.
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9:16 - 9:19What I was looking at
was an evolutionary transition -
9:19 - 9:22that I was going to pin down
when I got back to my office. -
9:22 - 9:26200 million years ago,
they adopted - readopted - -
9:26 - 9:30a fish-like style of swimming
when they hit the water. -
9:30 - 9:32And this one species -
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9:32 - 9:34this is the only one where you can see
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9:34 - 9:38both modes of progression,
in operation, alive today. -
9:38 - 9:42Because other animals
that walk upright, ourselves included, -
9:42 - 9:47do not walk and run like primitive fish,
like swimming like them. -
9:47 - 9:50But they have a very unbelievable system,
the mammalian system. -
9:50 - 9:52Here we see it in a cheetah.
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9:52 - 9:55It's like a 4-wheel drive,
independent system. -
9:55 - 9:57The shoulder's all loosened up.
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9:57 - 10:01Unlike the crocodile, it is completely
the body, the momentum - -
10:01 - 10:03in prey and predator alike -
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10:03 - 10:04at high speeds,
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10:04 - 10:06at turning corners is absolutely level.
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10:06 - 10:08They can do that with a loose shoulder.
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10:08 - 10:11When did this appear? I wondered,
and I'm working on right now. -
10:11 - 10:16Well, I enter the story in the middle
of the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, -
10:16 - 10:17where I saw a white speck
-
10:17 - 10:20but imagined that, maybe,
with that suture, it was a small mammal. -
10:20 - 10:23That's where this change occurred
100 million years ago, -
10:23 - 10:25but nobody had found the shoulder girdle.
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10:25 - 10:29But our specimen - see how small it is?
That's my thumb there - -
10:29 - 10:30preserved it.
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10:30 - 10:32And I reconstructed it upright,
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10:32 - 10:34but the gurus of the day
said, "No, no, no." -
10:34 - 10:36Now, it walked like a frog.
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10:36 - 10:38And so I thought how could I convey ...
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10:38 - 10:41Words, long papers -
nothing would convince them, -
10:41 - 10:43and then I thought of a way.
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10:43 - 10:45I CAT scanned it.
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10:45 - 10:46I segmented it.
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10:46 - 10:49I printed it the size of a big cat.
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10:49 - 10:52And I put it together physically -
at the bottom of your screen - -
10:52 - 10:54visualizing our hypothesis,
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10:54 - 10:57profoundly showing
the difference between them. -
10:57 - 11:00That is science.
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11:00 - 11:02How about this? Human site.
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11:02 - 11:06This I saw dimly out in the field,
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11:06 - 11:08what might be a triple burial.
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11:08 - 11:12Now, we're only 6, 7,
8, 9,10 thousand years ago. -
11:12 - 11:14This turned out to be
6 thousand years old. -
11:14 - 11:17I couldn't lift it because I didn't know
what was under it, -
11:17 - 11:19and yet I had to collect it somehow,
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11:19 - 11:20complete,
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11:20 - 11:22so that I could discover that in the lab.
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11:22 - 11:25And sure enough,
when we got back to the lab, -
11:25 - 11:27put this back together
like nobody has before - -
11:27 - 11:30this is the most posed burial
in prehistory. -
11:30 - 11:33You're awestruck when you see
something like that in the desert. -
11:33 - 11:35And when we prepared it from both sides
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11:35 - 11:38and reconstructed it vertically,
so you can walk around it, -
11:38 - 11:40we found points on the other side.
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11:40 - 11:42They were never used, it turned out.
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11:42 - 11:47They were salted as offerings in a grave
with a woman and her two children, -
11:48 - 11:50arms and legs intertwined.
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11:50 - 11:51It was a symbolic burial.
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11:51 - 11:53We found evidence of pollen clusters.
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11:53 - 11:58This is visualization - my life's work.
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11:58 - 12:02The evolution of dinosaurs,
some might say, is built on a tree. -
12:02 - 12:05The tree summarizes
thousands of characters -
12:05 - 12:08in worlds that are changing
and migrating millions of years ago. -
12:08 - 12:10It's sort of like this.
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12:10 - 12:13It's based on finding
the common characters -
12:13 - 12:15that link images together.
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12:15 - 12:18You have sort of built in your brain
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12:18 - 12:20the ability to look
at human faces like that. -
12:20 - 12:23It takes us years to figure that out
with dinosaur bones, -
12:23 - 12:26to figure two species
-
12:26 - 12:28over two other species
that might be linked, -
12:28 - 12:32but it's all the same - we're trying
to figure out with words what happened. -
12:32 - 12:35This is a way to visualize
in three dimensions -
12:35 - 12:37the evolution of the dinosaurs -
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12:37 - 12:38that tree -
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12:38 - 12:41as the continents broke apart.
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12:42 - 12:45It's a three-dimensional problem,
not a two-dimensional problem, -
12:45 - 12:46to visualize that.
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12:46 - 12:49And ultimately, for a computer
program to work that out. -
12:49 - 12:50How about this?
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12:50 - 12:53This isn't a program.
This isn't a screen grab. -
12:53 - 12:56This is a program I would like
a programmer to build. -
12:56 - 12:59I published it because I knew
it would stimulate that -
12:59 - 13:02if they could understand
what it was that we wanted. -
13:02 - 13:03How about this?
-
13:03 - 13:06Perhaps the most fundamental thing
I will give the systematics -
13:06 - 13:07is a grammatical understanding
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13:07 - 13:11of the words we use to put together
those evolutionary trees. -
13:11 - 13:16And it, visualized as a tree -
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13:17 - 13:19like a Chomskyan grammar tree -
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13:19 - 13:21I think is the easiest way
for people to understand -
13:21 - 13:23what it is I'm talking about:
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13:23 - 13:25the lines of text that make art.
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13:25 - 13:27Well, visualization -
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13:27 - 13:28we are primates.
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13:28 - 13:31We have 50 million years
of visualization behind us. -
13:31 - 13:35Our eyes aren't separate organs
like a kidney or a liver. -
13:35 - 13:37They're actually part of our brain
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13:37 - 13:41that's pinched down, made clear,
to see the world. -
13:41 - 13:45It projects back and then it projects
here and there and everywhere. -
13:45 - 13:49A huge part of our brain
is devoted to visualizing things. -
13:49 - 13:52Here's another quote
from that same journal -
13:52 - 13:54in an article on the meaning
of observation: -
13:54 - 13:57"STEM" - science, technology,
engineering, mathematics - -
13:57 - 13:59"needs something to give it some steam,
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13:59 - 14:02an "A" for art between the engineering."
-
14:02 - 14:04It goes on:
-
14:04 - 14:07"What if America approached innovation
with more than just technology? -
14:07 - 14:08What if,
-
14:08 - 14:13just like STEM is made up of science,
technology, engineering and math - -
14:13 - 14:15what if we had something like IDEA,
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14:15 - 14:18made up of intuition, design,
emotion and art?" -
14:18 - 14:20Somehow, these are not disconnected.
-
14:20 - 14:23Because if I go back
to the slide at the top - -
14:23 - 14:25I just spent a lot of time
talking about visualization, -
14:25 - 14:28that science, a good part of it,
is about visualization. -
14:28 - 14:30But I thought that's what art was too.
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14:31 - 14:33So, could it go the other way?
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14:33 - 14:36Could we look at art, sort of,
from a more scientific perspective? -
14:36 - 14:40I'm just going to give you
one small example, a humorous one, -
14:40 - 14:43to say yes, it can go in reverse.
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14:43 - 14:44Giacometti - one of my favorite artists.
-
14:44 - 14:45I was curious -
-
14:45 - 14:48he did a lot of weird things
in his day as a surrealist, -
14:48 - 14:52but the one we have at the art museum
looks like this, his mature style, -
14:52 - 14:54the long-gait statuette forms.
-
14:54 - 14:56I was sort of curious
what he was doing to the human body, -
14:56 - 14:59being a professor of human anatomy
at the university here. -
14:59 - 15:01And it turns out,
-
15:01 - 15:04if we got down measuring,
-
15:05 - 15:07very simple global transformation -
-
15:07 - 15:08two times lengthening.
-
15:08 - 15:11It wasn't that he took the legs
and stretched them out. No. -
15:11 - 15:13He stretched everything out:
-
15:13 - 15:16two times this way
or minus two times this way. -
15:17 - 15:18It was a global transformation.
-
15:18 - 15:22I don't know what he was taking,
but he got this image in his head, -
15:22 - 15:23and it's global.
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15:23 - 15:25There's other things - texture and so on -
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15:25 - 15:28but I thought, "Did anybody notice this?"
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15:28 - 15:31No. Not a word about it.
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15:31 - 15:34But that really is what
he was doing with human form. -
15:34 - 15:35So I thought I would take a dinosaur
-
15:35 - 15:38with the human proportions
like this Eoraptor - -
15:38 - 15:41got a tail; we don't have
as much of a tail - -
15:41 - 15:42and do the same thing.
-
15:42 - 15:44After all, it's a biped, like humans.
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15:44 - 15:46So I lengthened all the limbs twice,
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15:47 - 15:48put it together
-
15:48 - 15:50and brought people to see it -
-
15:50 - 15:52"Giacomettisaurus" I call it -
-
15:52 - 15:55an interesting way
to look at my animal artistically. -
15:55 - 15:57I had a lot of fun doing that.
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15:57 - 15:59But seriously,
-
15:59 - 16:05what I realize after 20 years
of discovery and realization of discovery: -
16:05 - 16:06it's a long process
-
16:06 - 16:10which is really heavy on visualization.
-
16:10 - 16:15I walked out of one studio 20 years ago,
and I walked into another one. -
16:16 - 16:19And I really feel quite at home
in this studio that we call science, -
16:19 - 16:25but it really is, in large measure,
involving many of the same things. -
16:25 - 16:26I think about this
-
16:26 - 16:30when we think and work with kids
who don't know what they want to be - -
16:30 - 16:32including some undergraduates here,
-
16:32 - 16:35but especially those kids
in neighborhoods around Chicago - -
16:35 - 16:38because the idea of science
is something very dry, -
16:38 - 16:40sometimes technical,
-
16:40 - 16:43forbidding in many ways.
-
16:43 - 16:45What if you described
science as adventure? -
16:45 - 16:47That's the way I feel about science.
-
16:47 - 16:52What if you described science
as visualization, at its core? -
16:52 - 16:56Which is what I think it is -
a lot of science is. -
16:56 - 17:00Then, maybe, we'd have a lot more
scientists in the next generation -
17:00 - 17:02because we certainly need them.
-
17:02 - 17:03Thank you very much.
-
17:03 - 17:05(Applause)
- Title:
- Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago
- Description:
-
Paul Sereno is a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and the president and co-founder of Project Exploration. Paul Sereno teaches the world about its evolutionary past through what he calls "adventure with a purpose." His travels have brought him to discover important links in the evolution of life on earth, such as his discovery of the world's largest crocodile.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 17:08
Retired user approved English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago | ||
Retired user edited English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago | ||
Peter van de Ven accepted English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago | ||
Peter van de Ven edited English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago | ||
Retired user edited English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago | ||
Retired user edited English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago | ||
Retired user edited English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago | ||
Retired user edited English subtitles for Art in science | Paul Sereno | TEDxUChicago |