In astonishing synchronicity, two events ventured into previously unknown territories of their respective disciplines: Albert Einstein formulated the General Theory of Relativity, and Pablo Picasso, with his painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, laid the foundation for what would later be called Cubism.
In his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein describes gravity as the curvature of four-dimensional spacetime, caused by mass and energy. It explains the interaction between matter and spacetime and, to this day, remains the only scientifically recognized theory of gravitation.
Screenshot from the OUBEY MINDSPACE Spark about Time
In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso explodes the two-dimensional figure on the canvas, breaks it down into its individual parts, reassembles them, and thereby creates a previously unknown form of three-dimensionality on a flat surface.
Screenshot from the OUBEY MINDSPACE Spark about Art
The simultaneity of these two events stands in contrast to the scale of their significance. Picasso’s painting moves within earthly dimensions; it transformed art. Einstein’s theory moves within cosmic dimensions; it transformed our understanding of space and time.
OUBEY found the synchronicity of these groundbreaking advances—into entirely new dimensions of scientific knowledge on the one hand and radically new forms of artistic expression on the other—extraordinarily fascinating. In one of our countless conversations about “God and the world,” he once brought up the year 1907. That he effortlessly explained the General Theory of Relativity to me on the spot and quite in passing is mentioned here only as an aside.
He spoke with great enthusiasm about the simultaneity of these two events—a fortunate moment in cultural history when science and art came as close to one another, both in time and in their social relevance, as they rarely have.
Over the centuries, the division of the world and of life into school and university disciplines had led to increasing alienation between them, sometimes even to mutual ignorance. OUBEY never accepted this separation. Herein lay one of the roots of his intellectual connections to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and to Ilya Prigogine and his groundbreaking work Order Out of Chaos. Yet OUBEY did not merely reject this division — he experienced the overcoming of this separation and expressed it in his painting: “Everything is connected to everything else, and my art is a visual expression of this realization.”
Among the few research institutions that were already consistently pursuing an interdisciplinary approach during OUBEYs lifetime is the legendary Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. That Prof. Stuart Kauffman, associate of the institute, agreed to do an Encounter with one of OUBEYs paintings would have delighted OUBEY. What he said about it in that encounter would have pleased him even more.
The year 1907 is not explicitly mentioned in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Yet visual references to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and to Einstein’s theory can be discovered there, and twice Albert Einstein appears in the form of a quotation.
Perhaps you will find them on your next visit to the MINDSPACE. This picture on a wall in the black-and-white Room of the OUBEY MINDSPACE might be helpful.
There are six rooms in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn hold various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse lies a story that tells us more about who OUBEY was and what he was like. These stories are told here by me.
With thanks to the team at Kubikfoto³ for the design of the OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has since received three international awards, including the renowned Red Dot Award.
After all, there have always been more than enough examples of the anti-thesis at all times, including the present day.
OUBEY came across the Monadology at an early age and was fascinated by the metaphysics of Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz on which it was based. As a philosopher, mathematician, physicist, metaphysician, mastermind of what we now call the computer and much more, he is still regarded by many as the last true universal genius.
And so OUBEY dedicated one of his early paintings not to the celebrated Isaac Newton but to Leibniz and his Monadology which had long gone unrecognised, calling it “The Journey of the Monads”.
Over the past four months, as part of the “Art of Resonance” show in the Mind Museum in Manila this painting has been viewed and enjoyed by more people than ever before. This alone would be reason enough to take a closer look at Leibniz’s Monadology
Then recently I read a commentary that referred to the thesis of the best of all possible worlds, only to reduce it to absurdity in light of the abysses into which peoples and nations are still plunging in the 21st century – as though history were nothing to learn from for the future and with this justification at the same time to call into question the divine origin of the world.
I do not feel called upon to philosophise on the existence of a God at this point. But I will say this much: it is striking how easily the inadequacy or even non-existence of a God comes to mind when bad things happen to us whether individually or collectively, caused by natural forces or by the brutal violence people and entire nations inflict on other people and other nations, as we are experiencing directly or indirectly today. And this is especially true when even the most barbaric atrocities are committed in the name of a god.
What fascinated OUBEY about Leibniz’s monadology was less its associated theodicy (justification of God) than its inherent understanding of the freedom, uniqueness and indivisibility of every monad, i.e. every soul in this universe. Bold and still far ahead of even many of today’s thinkers, for Leibniz not only his own human species, but everything that exists in the universe belonged to the animated beings.
Humans – at least according to the current state of knowledge – are the only species on this planet with a free will that goes beyond innate instinctive and generic behaviour and enables decisions that no other being can make. And, if the situation requires it, human will can even go against its own instincts and drives. Decisions such as whether one is prepared to harm another person for whatever reason, whether one is prepared to kill one or even many people, or whether one is able to forego one’s own advantage in favour of another living being are just a few examples of decisions of the will.
According to Leibniz, this world is not the best of all possible worlds because it is perfect, i.e. perfect and flawless in every respect. Rather, it is because it has endowed humans with free will as the only species in this world. A perfect world and the free will of its inhabitants to choose one behaviour or another are mutually exclusive. The question of how free human will really is has also been debated down the ages.
Let’s just imagine the opposite: a truly perfect world. People have been dreaming of a perfect world, a paradise on earth, not just since Thomas More published his philosophical treatise entitled “Utopia” in 1516. Just how intelligent Leibniz’s view of the world and mankind was can be seen from the attempts to realise such utopias. Both in the form of small, sectarian communities and in the form of large social attempts at realisation, all ended with the greatest possible lack of freedom for the individual. The fact that these systems are repeatedly abandoned by individuals or overcome by the social collective is a very strong testimony to the strength and power of free will.
For Leibniz, there is no perfect, ideal or even paradisiacal original state of this world and there never was. Quite unlike the belief that human sin was the reason for the expulsion from such a former paradise – as a kind of punishment – and that every human being since then has been born with an “original sin”. I clearly prefer the idea of a universe that accepts human error and even catastrophes and crimes in favour of freedom. In any case, neither the one nor the other can be proven.
Freedom creates space for the possible, for crossing boundaries – in thought and in action, in both positive and negative ways. But freedom also always means responsibility. Everyone decides every day how they use their freedom to make this world a better place or not, and bears the responsibility for doing so. Be it on a small or large scale.
In the “best of all possible worlds”, freedom is a prerequisite. This was probably one of the reasons why an irrepressible free spirit like OUBEY dedicated a painting to Leibniz’s idea. And perhaps this spirit of freedom lives on so strongly in this painting that to this day it immediately casts a spell over almost everyone who sees it.