Philosophy of Science

Funny.

In the post below on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) I included an excellent movie about Richard Feynman (I'm sure you watched it, imaginary witnesses - you have all the time in the world...).

I have been reading about the Philosophy of Science as a way of contextualizing the SSK readings I've been doing. I came across the following Feynman quote - "Philosophy of Science is about as useful to scientists as Ornithology is to birds."

This is both right and wrong. I'm not done my reading yet, so I can't explain how. I will never be able to EXPLAIN with words because I'm not smart in that kind of way. But I think I understand in some way and I want to make work about it. So even if I don't understand, well, I'm still DOING something, still CREATING something.

As is typical, I am discovering in my readings that I am only interested in certain parts of the Philosophy of Science. Now, maybe it's just that nobody has made any content that communicates the ideas in a way I can understand, but I only jive to the parts of PoS that abut my interest in cognitive linguistics and ontology in general.

Why do I do so much research? Why do I read so much? I don't really understand or remember that much. Is it just an excuse not to make work? Is it just my form of escape? Does all this reading have a negative effect on my artwork? Am I becoming to analytical? Is all this nervous electrical activity really doing anything but frying my heart and making me into a mechanical monster? Or, let's be honest - I'd LIKE to think that the ideas show up in the work. But in all honesty, maybe all this reading does not have much of an effect on the work and is just bullshit I put out there to make people believe I know what I'm talking about, when I'm really just interested in pretty shapes and color and movement and spacing out and drawing and generally not dealing with reality?

In any case, I had a bit of a frustration today with some video footage I shot. It's too dark, basically, and I won't admit it to myself. Or rather, I'm trying to use the darkness as a THING by using the color corrector and time remapping as tools to communicate something about the significance of these objects I'm working with. I was experimenting with a certain look and I was into it, and then suddenly I wasn't. You know how it is. Suddenly it stopped being fun and just seemed like a big chore. Maybe my spirit is just beat. It sees something and starts singing, and then I sometimes forget the words. Sometimes I think it doesn't matter - even if I forget the exact words, something of the melody and feel are imparted in the work. But this is a world in which one does get tired, does grow older. The actions of the self are such a crude, low-fidelity kind of tool.

Jeez I sound like a jerk.

That's cool. Nobody reads this blog. Anyway, I've been watching this video. Or rather I should say that this video represents one node of return in my research which includes all kinds of things my computer can fetch me while I sit here going crazy. I guess this video is interesting, or maybe it's a complete waste of time. I can't fucking watch it all the way through, but I think it would be cool if I could, and if I could think strait, which I can't.