[Fis] What is Art?

[Louis Kauffman]

Dear John,
I agree that art is an expression of our consciousness and indeed an expression of many needs of human being. When we enlarge the expression to human being, then we open to the understanding that our being reaches into the "continuum from the foundations of the Cosmos to life that is expressed in art”.

Anyone who asks for the origins of consciousness has to be aware that any highly specific aspect of consciousness is not the whole story, and yet such specifics hold clues to the nature of the whole.

I have been intrigued by some beliefs that seem to arise. For example Douglas Hofstader, in his book “Goedel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid” suggests that meaning/consciousness arises in formal systems via “strange loops” such as the Quine Sentence written below.

“Denies its veracity when appended to its own quotation” denies its veracity when appended to its own quotation.

To this observer, the sentence resonates with meaning in the linguistic context of the observer’s ability to become conscious of meaning in language. But to say the loops in formality generate consciousness is another matter. And, I believe, needs to be enfolded into a larger cosmic context such as you, John, indicate.

Here is a quote from Hofstadter: “… the Goedelian strange loop that arise in formal systems in mathematics … is a loop that allows such a system to “perceive itself” , to talk about itself, to become “self-aware”, and in a sense it would not be going to far to say that by virtue of having such a loop, a formal system acquires a self.”

Hofstader is an artist of course. And you may wish to comment on what he says as a form of art.

Of course, I have been so informal in this letter to arouse the criticism of everyone in the FIS group. Let us hope so.
Very best,
Lou Kauffman





> On Jan 17, 2026, at 3:58 PM, JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear FIS, I am of the opinion that art is an expression of consciousness, raising the question as to what consciousness is? I fell down this 'rabbit hole' twenty years ago, having performed a series of experiments to understand how and why Parathyroid Hormone-related Protein (PTHrP) is necessary for the formation of alveoli in the lung (Rubin LP, Kovacs CS, De Paepe ME, Tsai SW, Torday JS, Kronenberg HM. Arrested pulmonary alveolar cytodifferentiation and defective surfactant synthesis in mice missing the gene for parathyroid hormone-related protein. Dev Dyn. 2004 Jun;230(2):278-89)? The duplication of the PTHrP Receptor gene during the water-land transition amplified all of the vertebrate physiologic adaptations to land- lungs, kidneys, skeleton, skin- and since PTHrP is a stretch-sensitive gene, I tested the hypothesis that PTHrP mediated the vertebrate adaptation to the force of gravity. If cells are exposed to zero gravity they lose their differentiated phenotypes (i.e. they devolve), and when yeast are exposed to zero gravity they cannot conduct a calcium flux, meaning that they are unconscious. Moreover, human consciousness has been driven by bipedalism (Torday JS. A central theory of biology. Med Hypotheses. 2015 Jul;85(1):49-57), freeing our forelimbs for tool making, including language as a tool, and locomotion. Importantly, both language and locomotion are under control by the FoxP2 gene, so that positive selection pressure for FoxP2 would have coordinately stimulated language and locomotion, expressed through our hands and minds as art of all kinds- literature, painting, sculpture, music- in other words, art is a manifestation of our need to communicate with our environment and with other humans.
> 
> Furthermore, all of the above is due to the evolution of homeostatic control of energy due to Symbiogenesis (Sagan, 1967), or the assimilation of factors in the environment that threaten homeostasis, including the elements in the Cosmos, the latter being an exaptation (Gould and Vrba, 1982) of Stellar Nucleosynthesis (Hoyle, 1946), or the serial chemical reaction of hydrogen and helium to form the stars, the elements being their byproducts in the exact order of their atomic masses as the 'logic' of the Cosmos. Symbiogenesis is the mechanism by which life has acquired the logic of the Cosmos. In other words there is a continuum from the foundations of the Cosmos to life that is expressed in art.
> 
> Your comments and criticisms are welcomed.
> 
> Best, John
> 
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