Panel Statement

Panel: The Data Landscapes of Climate Change (FARFIELD 2)

“Logic, there­fore, re­mains bar­ren un­less fer­til­ized by in­tu­ition.”  _Jules Henri Poin­caré
“The aim of music is not to ex­press feel­ings but to ex­press music.”  _Pierre Boulez

Many sci­en­tists be­lieve not only that art has no place in sci­ence, but also that the two are ba­si­cally in­com­pat­i­ble and if art might exert any in­flu­ence on sci­ence, this would bedrag­gle sci­ence. On the other hand many artists feel that sci­ence is dull and is thwart­ing their cre­ativ­ity and artistry. How­ever, I am con­vinced the re­al­ity is more com­plex than that- that art, as well as sci­ence, are in­ter­linked more than is gen­er­ally ac­knowl­edged and could mu­tu­ally ben­e­fit from each other. Draw­ing from my per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence as a sci­en­tist and once mu­si­cian, I will dis­cuss how much sci­ence is art, and how much sci­ence can bring to art in a sub­jec­tive col­lage of thoughts and ideas, mostly draw­ing from the topic cli­mate change.

• An­dreas Fis­chlin is Head of the Ter­res­trial Sys­tems Ecol­ogy Group, at the Swiss Fed­eral In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy. Born in 1949 he stud­ied bi­ol­ogy and sys­tems the­ory and did eco­log­i­cal re­search in Canada. He re­turned to Switzer­land ETH Zurich to teach sys­tems ecol­ogy and com­puter sci­ence. He played a lead­ing role in the de­sign and for­ma­tion of the novel cur­ricu­lum and de­part­ment of En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences at ETH Zurich. He was pre­sented with the Peace Nobel Prize 2007 as part of the awarded group In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Panel on Cli­mate Change (IPCC), for his work as co­or­di­nat­ing lead au­thor in the Sec­ond and Fourth As­sess­ment Re­port of the IPCC. He rep­re­sents Swiss sci­en­tists in the Swiss del­e­ga­tion in United Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FCCC) ne­go­ti­a­tions and has pub­lished nu­mer­ous sci­en­tific works, no­tably on how cli­mate change im­pacts on ecosys­tems.