Yesterday, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson went on r/Art and posted this:
I’m perennially intrigued when the universe serves as the artist’s muse. I wrote the foreword to Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual, by Lynn Gamwell (Princeton Press, 2005). And to her sequel of that work Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History (Princeton Press, Fall 2015). And I was also honored to write the Foreword to Peter Max’s memoir The Universe of Peter Max (Harper 2013).
I will be by to answer any questions you may have later today, so ask away below.
Victoria from reddit is helping me out today by typing out some of my responses: other questions are getting a video reply, which will be posted as it becomes available.
When the arts and sciences seem unrelated or in conflict with one another, it’s nice to see Tyson talk about art and what it can do! He answered several questions about how to promote the arts alongside science, rather than competing with them and welcomed questions about the intersections of art and science, as well as his own favorite artworks.
We learned that he’s a big fan of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, finds Contact (1997) “near-perfect” and is “partial to minimalist architecture.” Someone also asked him what planet he would pose nude in front of and he typed out “chuckles heartily.”
Here are some of our favorite answers about science fiction:
On COSMOS 2 and not being afraid of AI (really, not afraid at all):
On the way science fiction films blend two of his favorite things:
On what the next big science fiction film should cover:
And finally, on his favorite dinosaur:
His answers are charming and worth a read, check them out here!
(via Reddit, Image via NASA HQ Photo)
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