What keeps art and science apart?
Can Art and Science be real distinguishable 'entities', each existing independently of each other, somewhere 'out there' waiting for us to access them? An alternative, as we shall propose, is that the dichotomy resides simply in our minds, depending simply on how we use language, and not in the nature of what is actually being talked about, as is conventionally assumed - are we talking about the Mona Lisa or the Quantum Theory? There have been recent proposals for a 'New Humanism' and a 'Third Culture' on the John Brockman Edge website and in associated publications - rather like the 'Third Way' suggested in contemporary political thought, between the left and the right - some new path forward between the extremes of pure art and pure science. However, I feel that we should ask if this will ever be possible, in principle, for reasons of language. Language is either indistinct or quite specifically unambiguous. There is no half-way house. Originally C.P. Snow questioned, quite rightly, the rather arrogant popular assumption that there was a certain cultural superiority attached to being familiar with the arts rather than with science, and there is no doubt that this attitude still prevails. Certainly it is significant by implication, that it is the 'New Humanism' that is searched for, and not the 'New Science'. The humanities are still considered to be the place where culture truly resides, where the important 'values' are, and perhaps even the future of mankind. This is a substantial claim that might be questioned, despite it being so common.
Values
Almost all of human thought is pervaded by our concept of 'value', and it happens because most human thought is what John Carey calls, in his discussion on the nature of art and literature, 'indistinct'. The existence of a value implies that there is a choice of interpretation for most situations. We probably all have a fairly well agreed sense of what we call 'patriotism', for example. But agreeing whether one instance of behaviour was more patriotic than another might be more difficult, if not impossible. We do not quantify patriotism, as the scientist quantifies force, say. Obviously, in art and literature such freedom is the essence of discussion, whereas in science ambiguity is avoided. However, the indistinctness in literature that Carey holds out, quite rightly, as a virtue, is often confused sloppily with a sheer lack of clarity in reasoning. Sloppiness in thinking about art generally often leads to completely untenable conclusions, which cannot possibly be upheld rationally.
The novelist Jeanette Winterson, in The Times of July 7th 2007 presented a piece entitled 'If your language is impoverished your thinking will shrink to fit' which, despite the instinctively credible sentiment of the title, goes on to demonstrate exactly the opposite. The article broadly suggests a case for politicians to read more poetry to increase the possibility that they will then make better political decisions. Some mysterious wisdom will , apparently, be absorbed from an eternal celestial repository through poetry, and imported into parliamentary life. It is like offering poetry in place of religion as a basis for behaviour, although she does not explicitly state this. Such 'imagination' in the wrong setting could surely prove disastrous, and certainly would bring even further confusion to recent political and economic events. Interestingly, John Carey also takes her to task in his book for being a 'high art advocate' by saying;
she scorns realism, and equates art with 'rapture and ecstasy' ….. Her critical writings reveal that she lives in a world of absolutes …. true artists are spiritually superior and also, she implies, socially superior
Returning to another very recent attempt to raise the banner of humanism once more on the intellectual barricades, Clive James makes a contribution in his recent book Cultural Amnesia, extracts from which were given in The Times of May 14th 2007. It deserves some serious attention, not for the truths it offers which seem to be few, but as an example of the life still existing in the cause of pure humanism. As he presents it, there remains a cause apparently unblemished by any doubts of its worth, although this can be deceptive. Is it the same humanism that John Brockman promotes on his Edge website? Why is the word 'humanism' so popular? Certainly, John Gray, for one, feels that it is highly suspect, as he has shown in such recent work as Straw Dogs, or in a later book when he relates the concept to the companion idea that there is always some utopia lurking somewhere to which we continually aspire.
For example, Clive James has asked
Does culture, then, provide the ultimate rejoinder to totalitarianism? There was never a time like now to be a lover of the arts.
What is this 'culture'? Were there no lovers of the arts amongst the gas chamber staff? Hidden in what James writes is the realisation of a truth which he is reluctant to admit, I fear. He does not realise that it is science that defines the boundaries of culture - what is possible - and it is art that fills the space so provided, although one should also ask if the nature of our culture really is decided by the world's greatest artists, or more by popular taste? Is it the Odyssey or soap operas that are the more influential? Science and art perhaps could be symbiotic, not mutually exclusive as usually assumed; but resulting from the alternative ways we use language.
Richard Bronk, in his recently published book 'The Romantic Economist' also invokes the romantic poets as a source of superior economic strategy for tackling our currrent financial problems.
But is art as subjective as some would hope, or science, on the other hand, as objective as we would expect? Initially, science was concerned with explaining experiences that we could all share, but now it is increasingly being forced, by necessity, to face experiences completely new to it, unlike art that continually creates and presents them by choice, as the very reason for its existence. However, some branches of modern science are apparently beginning to assume rather a subjective nature; what we see can depend on how we look, and when we look. Some events can appear to happen in two different places at the same time, for example, or particles can have a dual nature depending on how you examine them. Modern physics demands that we must come to terms with such uncertainty and ambivalence. The fundamental importance of the individual observer in perceiving the world is something that art has always considered solely its own prerogative. So both science and art are now, having to cope with similar problems of subjectivity, the one by necessity and the other by choice.
So we have the situation that art itself also enshrines a duality; on the one hand revelling in its ambiguity and the freedom it gives to our possible interpretation of literature, music and painting by the use of metaphor. But also, at the same time, it is assumed to be able to posit values that are 'absolute' and 'transcendental', although often of questionable provenance, just as any conventional religion normally also does. Language can, on the other hand, provide the scientist with the means of describing a shared reality as unambiguously as possible. But now the scientist is being faced with new experiences for which he has no words, as mentioned above, and so he is borrowing them from art and talks of flavour, charm, and colour, so apparently exploiting their 'artistic' indistinctness, instead of coining neologisms as it has done previously, such as entropy, say?
Reality
In a recent interview entitled Cross Purposes Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was questioned about aspects of human experience and had this to say about science;
'
Science is a set of brilliantly successful methods producing brilliantly successful hypotheses about how things work. What it is not is a picture of reality. It will give you a very significant purchase on reality. But it is not an ethic, not a metaphysic. To treat it like that is a kind of idolatry'.
What does he mean? What is his conception of reality? Firstly, he implies that 'an ethic', or 'a metaphysic', must be an inescapable component of reality. Secondly, by the use of the word idolatry, the criterion he seeks has an unavoidably religious flavour. Has his statement any meaning to a mind that cannot embrace a deity? This certainly places the discussion into rather an exclusive arena, which would disqualify many contributors from the discussion.
Perhaps we should ask at this point if religion itself, in view of its apparent semi-instinctive nature, is not a product of natural selection, conferring some 'benefits' to the community, and not reject it out of hand as some writers, like Dawkins, suggest we should. This is not, in any way, to acknowledge any 'rationality' it may possess, but just some pointer towards possible reasons of its successful survival.
But was this always so?
Science, at the beginning of the 17th c, appeared as an alternative to the stultifying ideas of Aristotle that still held sway after 2,000 years. It may well be in the nature of objects to fall to the ground, as he had pronounced, but it took a Newton to explain why this happened. However, the nature of gravitational force is still not fully understood even today; a fact that science has to accommodate and accept without feeling too inadequate, just incomplete, whilst moving on in its applications and designs. We are still able to land a vehicle on the moon despite our ignorance about the real nature of gravity. However, the liberal humanism of the 17th century was far more welcoming of science that it appears to be today. Milton even made a point of visiting Galileo, during his tour of Italy. Wordsworth encouraged admiration for Newton by his words
With his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of
Thought, alone.
just as other poets were also to do. The order and structure which science brought was, in fact, seen to be supporting evidence for the existence of an all-knowing designing God.
Will the situation change eventually as science faces more phenomena, in which the observer is also important; what you see depends on where you are and when you look, in sub-atomic physics? So, it is interesting to speculate if the use of language by science and art might also converge eventually, resulting in art and the humanities becoming less disenchanted with science than they are today, being simply different, but compatible, facets of our human nature and our language.
But a paradox remains; it is that we are so shaped by value concepts that intelligent thought seems impossible without them, and their very existence rests on the fact that we know nothing for certain. Otherwise there would be no need to set one situation against another to decide some optimal choice. Our apparent need to search for truth, and the fact that language appears as the tool for doing that, or at least for discussing it, is a uniquely human trait. It is interesting that Richard Dawkins latest book, The God Delusion, denying the validity of traditional religion and its values, came after his earlier book Unweaving the Rainbow had invoked the work of poets who extolled the 'beauty' of the natural world, and other values as the true objects for our wonder, but isn't this just replacing one 'religion' for another? He does seem to be keeping a foot in both camps.
© Frank Evans 2009