- #1
motai
- 365
- 2
Recently I watched a documentary on Vladimir Nabokov's outlook on Kafka's Metamorphosis, and he made the comment, "The passion of science and the precision of art." Usually it is interpreted the other way around "The precision of science and the passion of art" according to modern interpretations of the normally (seemingly?) diametric fields.
Now, it seems to me that even though the sciences rely heavily on concrete facts and numerical reasoning, art seems to apply the same amount of detail but on a much more abstract scale (even though the goals of art may not always coincide with the goals of science, ie you don't see an artist trying to paint the energy levels of an excited atom or a poet describing the exact nature of superconductivity).
But the goals appear to be the same: the search for truth and knowledge. In this case, however, it is found in fundamentally different ways. Art in general seeks truth through usage of emotions and human nature (through the sharing of human experience), whereas science tends to find it through the formentioned logical reasoning and analysis (mainly to describe the fundamental through use of reduction). Both attempt to find the underlying nature of the structures that may per chance govern the way the universe operates.
So would it be to our benefit if artists were to take up science and scientists were to take up art? Different views can thus inspire ideas on both sides, and would thus enrich both fields. Now, they may not contribute exactly like a scientist or an artist would in their respective fields, but the peaceful exchange of philosophies doesn't seem all that unreasonable.
Now, it seems to me that even though the sciences rely heavily on concrete facts and numerical reasoning, art seems to apply the same amount of detail but on a much more abstract scale (even though the goals of art may not always coincide with the goals of science, ie you don't see an artist trying to paint the energy levels of an excited atom or a poet describing the exact nature of superconductivity).
But the goals appear to be the same: the search for truth and knowledge. In this case, however, it is found in fundamentally different ways. Art in general seeks truth through usage of emotions and human nature (through the sharing of human experience), whereas science tends to find it through the formentioned logical reasoning and analysis (mainly to describe the fundamental through use of reduction). Both attempt to find the underlying nature of the structures that may per chance govern the way the universe operates.
So would it be to our benefit if artists were to take up science and scientists were to take up art? Different views can thus inspire ideas on both sides, and would thus enrich both fields. Now, they may not contribute exactly like a scientist or an artist would in their respective fields, but the peaceful exchange of philosophies doesn't seem all that unreasonable.