Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 113.
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        Date: 2025-08-20 15:05:24+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: vision then language

In Words Without Music (2015) Philip Glass, writing about finding 
his own musical language, cites Albert Einstein's best known
thought experiment, first conceived at the age of 16.* Glass's 
version is a bit different than Einstein's, in "Autobiographical 
Notes", but his point is the same. "Einstein clearly visualized his
work", Glass writes. "In one of his books on relativity, trying to
explain it to people, he wrote that he imagined himself sitting on a
beam of light, and the beam of light was traveling through the universe
at 186,000 miles per second. What he saw was himself sitting still and
the world flashing by him at a really high speed. His conclusion was
that all he had to do—as if it were a minor matter—was to invent the
mathematics to describe what he had seen." 

Glass comments that, "What I have to do when I compose is not that 
different. All I have to do after I have the vision is to find the language 
of music to describe what I have heard, which can take a certain amount 
of time. I’ve been working in the language of music all my life, and it’s 
within that language that I’ve learned how ideas can unfold."

Struggling to get just the right words to express an idea must be a 
common enough experience, but I don't think this is what Glass is 
talking about -- he refers to a whole mode of expression, not just 
the right phrase. In that sense, reading Glass' account, I wonder 
if there is there a corresponding 'language of computing' --not a 
theory but a mode of thought and action which brings about creative 
intimacy with the machine?

Comments welcome, as always.

All best,
WM
-----
(*"Autobiographical Notes", in Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., Albert
Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, Library of Living Philosophers vol.
VII, p. 53). For an extensive discussion, see John D. Norton, "Chasing
the Light:", in Mélanie Frappier, Letitia Meynell and James Robert
Brown, eds. Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science, and the Arts.
New York: Routledge, 2013.


--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
   Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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