Art and Science

While art sometimes unites an audience and its creator in a basic emotion, its trademark seems to be the vast spectrum of reactions along which it sweeps people, rather than a fixed, specific thought to which it targets them. If art simply reflected reality, if it did not depend upon the idiosyncrasies of each artist, no one should attempt to paint another oak tree. It’s been done before; that bark, those leaves can certainly mean no more today than yesterday, if the view is all the same. But it is not. Staggering infinite possibilities of human perspective inform and produce art. More than art helps us to see the oak tree – how green a leaf may be, how its color changes with the season, how its shadow falls and ripples on a lake – art helps us see each other and ourselves – how we fear, embrace change, death, loss, the unknown, growth, stability, peace, shelter, beauty. But if successful, it rarely tells us how to see, but rather asks. It proposes something our minds may nibble and gnaw at for moments, months, lives.

Science permits us another strain of understanding. It gives us problems and questions as well, but unites us in answers and facts upon which we may stand, speak, search, from which we may climb together to continue and progress. It gives us relations and regularities upon which to depend, ways we may all see things the same. We choose science as our main method of understanding the world because it is more reliable than art, and because it affects the physical nature of our existence in such drastic ways. No one gets the leisure time to create much culture or art if no one’s figured out how to cultivate plants or cure and prevent some basic illnesses. But beyond these practical considerations, science also often gives us the very basis we require for art. We must all understand the concept of oak tree and shadow and perspective before we can add human meaning to the tree’s representation or distortion in art.