Nonetheless, this week I came across an article that briefly examines the neurobiology of art: what effect does art have on the brain, and why is art important to what it means to be human? While many artistic things have been said about flying, I was struck with the connection flying has with art here:
[P]aintings by Seurat or Mondrian stimulate an area of the brain that also derives joy from solving puzzles for pleasure.... The idea is that multiple areas of the brain cooperate to solve this "puzzle" of art that, as a result, creates a feeling of satisfaction. When this is happening, there are distinct areas in the frontal lobe that interact and bring together "memory, experience, [and] learning."In some ways, what I enjoy most about flying is that it is a constant three-dimensional puzzle that you have to continuously be solving. Your brain has to construct a mental map of where you are in relation to multiple factors at the same time: weather, other airplanes, airports, terrain, fuel, engine condition, and so on, and it has to solve them into one flight path.
Even with the autopilot on, you still have to do this, since you have to know if what you told the autopilot to do is what you really need it to be doing. I find this challenge immensely enjoyable, and one of the things about it is that you don't just solve it once and be done with it: you have to update your solution to that puzzle moment after moment.
This constant puzzle solving is a form of search for truth and beauty in the laws of physics. One of the rewarding things about it is that you have immediate feedback: if you do the wrong thing in an airplane, you'll know about it. This constant process of path prediction is a search for what's constant in a world that is anything but constant.
That is why if you replace "function of art" with "purpose of a pilot" in the following sentence, the thread that connects "flying", "art", and "the art of flying" becomes clear: "I shall therefore define the function of art as being a search for constancies, which is also one of the most fundamental functions of the brain. The function of art is therefore an extension of the function of the brain—the seeking of knowledge in an ever changing world."
In other words, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, "I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of
petty things." I would add to the end of that, "It turns the tyranny of petty things into a litany of pretty things." The mundane becomes the sublime; the pointless becomes the poignant.
Art is sometimes described as an attempt to make sense of the world. Socrates, a man who never flew because he was born over two thousand years too early, said that we can do the same thing through flying: "Man must rise above the Earth—to the top of the atmosphere and beyond—for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives."
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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.
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