"I listened to something recently by Philip Glass. It was fantastic kind of symphonic stuff with dance and video and kind of theater in it, as well. And it's throwing all of this at you. And the hope, I think, of the artist is they're doing this kind of multisensory projection to try to grow in your mind the idea that Philip Glass had in his mind when he was writing this music. And just talking it through, if Philip Glass just said I was thinking this and this, then it's dissected and it's gone. The magic of it was its holistic nature. Somehow you've got to recreate this holistic nature in someone else's mind.And I think that's really what art is all about is communicating these big, complex objects, which are ideas inside our head, but in a non-dissected way in which the object isn't completely dissected, or it's dissected in such a way it can be reassembled in somebody else's mind. So you get a full experience of what the artist had or as close as he or she can make it. So I think that to me is what art does. It's a way of communicating these wonderful ideas and feelings that we have inside our heads. And they're trapped there, and art allows you - by playing music or painting, or writing poetry... - it allows you to communicate this in this holistic kind of way."Johnjoe McFadden is the author of Life is Simple, How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London and went on to work on human genetic diseases and then infectious diseases, at the University of Surrey. Professor McFadden has specialised in examining the genetics of microbes such as the agents of tuberculosis and meningitis. His other books are Quantum Evolution: Life in the Multiverse, and Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (co-authored with Jim Al-Khalili). He has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals on a wide range of subjects and lectures around the world. His present post is Associate Dean (International) and Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey.www.surrey.ac.uk/people/johnjoe-mcfaddenhttps://johnjoemcfadden.co.ukwww.basicbooks.com/titles/johnjoe-mcfadden/life-is-simple/9781549112119www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org