Art and Physics

This book is comparing two polar opposite fields: art and physics. You would never think that these two areas would have something in common. In the first chapter, Shlain explains how we use physics in art and vice-versa. He says how physicists try to break down nature and artists try to break it down into different parts so it can be seen perfectly as a whole. Also, that in the beginning of our lives we see and learn things in an abstract way, we try to understand reality just like a physicist does with nature.
In the second chapter he begins talking about how the Greeks way of beginning our letter system with vowels was that civilization's first abstract art since it was such an odd and new thing. Since the alphabet was repeatedly used by large numbers of Greeks for long periods of time, it reinforced the aspects of comprehension: abstraction, continuity, and linearity. Later it tells how those three aspects are in art just as much as they are in physics. Finally, in the third chapter it talks about religion, specifically Christianity and how the church put down physics and art so that people will really only believe what the bible says.