THE ASCENDANCE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
561
Monet's first"
Impression: soleil levant"
of
I872 .
Both are products of
an upbeat, experimental attempt
to
reduce a mass of blooming, buzzing
confusion
to
beautiful bites of sense or pigment:
Yesterday about five, I was on the quay by the Arsenal, watching
in front of me, across the Seine, the sky reddened by the setting sun.
Fleecy clouds rose in the form of a half dome, and bent over the
trees of the Jardin des Plantes. The whole of this vault seemed
incrusted with scales of copper; countless indentations, some
almost burning, some nearly black, extended, in rows of strange
metallic lustre, up to the highest part of the sky, while, all below, a
long bronze-colored band, extending along the horizon, was
streaked and cut by the black fringe of branches. Here and there,
rose-colored gleams of light rested on the pavements; the river
shone softly through a rising mist; I could see barges floating with
the stream, and two or three teams of horses on the bank, while
towards the east, the slanting beams of crane stood out against the
gray sky.
In
half an hour, all this had died out; there was but one
patch of clear sky behind the Pantheon; reddish-colored smoke was
wreathing about in the dying purple of the evening, and the vague
colors intermingled. A blue vapor hid the arches of the bridges and
the edges of the roofs. The apse of the cathedral stood alone, look–
ing with its pinnacles and jointed buttresses, in size and shape like
an empty crab-shell. Things prominent and colored but a moment
ago, were now like mere sketches on a dull paper. Here and there
a gas-light shone out like a lonely star, and caught the attention as
other things faded away. Soon, strings of light extended themselves
as far as the eye could reach, and the indistinct flickering glare of
crowded Paris rose in the west, while below the arches, along the
quays, and over the weirs, the rippling water kept up its nightly
murmuring. (Taine,
de !'Intelligence
r874)
James Collins:
The t itle of my talk is "Physics Meets Biology: The
Ascendance of Interdisciplinary Science," co-written by Timothy S.
Gardner.
It
is widely believed that America's recent economic prosperity
derives largely from the searing pace of innovation in the microelec–
tronics and computer industry. But the pace of innovation, driven by
exponential increases in microchip complexity and power, may be
grinding
to
a halt. Concern over this possible deceleration, coupled with
Leonard Adleman's use of DNA in
I994
to solve a "hard" computa–
tional problem, has sparked a growing interest in biocomputing as an
alternative
to
silicon .
