Selection of Articles by Philip Ball

Nanoethics

Nanoethics: a talk delivered at the Royal Society for the Arts, London, March 2003. Download PDF

NANOETHICS AND THE PURPOSE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Philip Ball
Talk delivered at ‘Materials Choices’ symposium
Royal Society for Arts, London, March 2003

I apologize for the banality of the question with which I want to begin, but I do hope to convince you that asking it is not simply a matter of solipsistic navel-gazing.

The question is this: What is science?

I’d venture to suggest that many working scientists will give an answer somewhat along the following lines, which I found in a book about scientific ethics:

    Science pursues the truth of general physical law, attempting to uncover underlying principles that govern the natural world.

That is to say, science is about understanding how the world works. …

NanoethicsRead More »

Nanotechnology in fact and fiction: (different talk!)

Nanotechnology in fact and fiction: a (different!) talk for sixth-formers delivered at the University of Oxford, March 2003. Download PDF or Word Doc.+ Powerpoint (ZIP file 1.35Mb)

NANOTECHNOLOGY IN FACT AND FICTION – Philip Ball
Lecture delivered at Oxford University, March 2003
There is a Powerpoint presentation to accompany this talk.

What is the scariest thing? I suspect that all writers of horror and thrillers will agree on this: the thing that scares us most is the thing we cannot see. It is, let’s be frank, a grim time to be reminded of the terrors of the invisible foe, but there is nothing new in that. Some historians argue that the Black Death in the 14th century drove all of Europe to a state of collective madness, creating an obsession with death and with the invisible demons that were believed to torment humankind. The plague was blamed on poisonous airs, pestilential vapours, and on the agency of devils and witches.

…

Nanotechnology in fact and fiction: (different talk!)Read More »

Nanotechnology in fact and fiction

Nanotechnology in fact and fiction: a talk delivered for the Founders’ Day address, Union College, NY, February 2003. Download PDF

NANOTECHNOLOGY IN FACT AND FICTION – Philip Ball
Founders Day address at Union College 27 February 2003

What is the scariest thing? I suspect that all writers of horror and thrillers will agree on this: the thing that scares us most is the thing we cannot see. It is, let’s be frank, a grim time to be reminded of the terrors of the invisible foe, but there is nothing new in that. Some historians argue that the Black Death in the 14th century drove all of Europe to a state of collective madness, creating an obsession with death and with the invisible demons that were believed to torment humankind. The plague was blamed on poisonous airs, pestilential vapours, and on the agency of devils and witches.

The novelist Michael Crichton has tapped into these fears of the unseen. In Jurassic Park, Crichton gave us monsters that were all too monstrously tangible. But in his latest book Prey, which dominated the bestseller lists over this Christmas, the danger is invisible. It comes from robots, each the size of a bacterium, which swarm in the air like particles of dust and are capable of reducing anything to a featureless sludge. In Prey, the enemy is nanotechnology. …

Nanotechnology in fact and fictionRead More »

Hits, Misses and Close Calls

Hits, Misses and Close Calls: An Image Essay on Pattern Formation in “On Growth and Form”
The preprint of an article published in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 38.1, 74 (2013).

Download PDF

Turing Patterns

An extended version of an article published in Chemistry World, June 2012. Download PDF.

Pattern formation in nature

Pattern formation in nature: Physical constraints and self-organizing characteristics
An article to appear in a special issue of Architectural Design, 2011.

Download PDF

Patterns in art and nature

Patterns in art and nature: a talk delivered at Dulwich Picture Gallery, May 2003.
Download PDF or Word Doc.+ Powerpoint (ZIP file 8.4Mb)

PATTERNS IN ART AND NATURE – Philip Ball Notes for a talk delivered at Dulwich Picture Gallery, May 2003
This talk is accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation

Fingal’s Cave on the island of Staffa, near Mull in Scotland, has inspired artists (this is Turner) and composers – Felix Mendelsohn wrote his orchestral piece named after the cave in 1829. But it also made an impression on an awestruck Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, when he sailed to Staffa in 1772 during an expedition to Iceland. This is what he said:

    “Compared to this what are the cathedrals or palaces built by men! Mere models or playthings, as diminutive as his works will always be when compared with those of nature. What now is the boast of the architect! Regularity, the only part in which he fancied himself to exceed his mistress, Nature, is here found in her possession, and here it has been for ages undescribed.”

Banks had noticed that the entrance to the cave was flanked by these great pillars of rock. Close up, you can see the regularity that Banks spoke about: hexagonal cross-sections. …

Patterns in art and natureRead More »

Alchemy and colour

Alchemy and colour: an article for the UCL chemistry departmental bulletin.
Download PDF

ALCHEMY IN THE COLOURS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Philip Ball
An article written for the UCL chemistry department, 2002

If you were a painter during the Renaissance, you were probably something of an alchemist too. That’s not to say that you spent your time trying to make gold; but you would have been familiar with the chemical manipulation of matter. You had to be-for there were no art shops, no Winsor and Newton, in those days: you had to make your own paints.

To some of those artists, alchemy was just a chemical technology: a convenient manufacturing process for making colours and other useful substances, such as turpentine and varnishes. Cennino Cennini, a Florentine craftsman, writing around 1390, explains that the brilliant red pigment called vermilion ‘is made by alchemy, prepared in a retort’-but he doesn’t bother to tell his readers how to do this, for ‘it would be too tedious’. Instead, he says, you can buy it from the apothecaries; but don’t take it ready-ground, because the swindlers will mix it with brick dust. …

Alchemy and colourRead More »

Scroll to Top