Can we say that the sciences are a form of art?
I read a small little green book by Paul Feyerabend: "Wissenschaft als Kunst", meaning "Science as an Art".
Now a painter uses paint or other materials to construct images, a sculpure can be made with various materials. A photograph can be made with different equipment or storage mediums. Music can be played in a huge variety of ways, installations can be made, plays can be played in a huge variety too, films can be made, etc.
Now what do they express? Worldviews? Inner worlds? Im not sure. Aboriginal art shows an objective view on Nature. So do colorful sand mantras. Can we say the sciences do too?If so, what's the material of expression and what's expressed (this is maybe too much)?
Now a painter uses paint or other materials to construct images, a sculpure can be made with various materials. A photograph can be made with different equipment or storage mediums. Music can be played in a huge variety of ways, installations can be made, plays can be played in a huge variety too, films can be made, etc.
Now what do they express? Worldviews? Inner worlds? Im not sure. Aboriginal art shows an objective view on Nature. So do colorful sand mantras. Can we say the sciences do too?If so, what's the material of expression and what's expressed (this is maybe too much)?
Comments (55)
It's not as if there is something called "art" which only applies to certain works of arts, or specific artists.
Quoting Manuel
I don’t think that’s what Feyerabend intended with his linkage of science and science. I think it was closer to Kuhn’s purpose in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , which was to change the image of science by bringing it closer to the image of art.
“The most persuasive case for the concept of cumulativeness is made by the familiar contrast between the development of science and that of art. Both disciplines display continuity of historical development –
neither could have reached its present state without its past – yet the relation of present to past in these two fields is clearly distinct.
Einstein or Heisenberg could, we feel sure, have persuaded Newton that twentieth-century science has surpassed the science of the seventeenth century, but we anticipate no remotely similar conclusion from a debate between, say, Rembrandt and Picasso.
In the arts successive developmental stages are autonomous and self-complete: no obvious external standard is available for comparisons between them.
The creative idiom of a Rembrandt, Bach, or Shakespeare resolves all its aesthetic problems and prohibits the consideration of others. Fundamentally new modes of aesthetic expression emerge only in intimate conjunction with a new perception of the aesthetic problem that the new modes must aim to resolve. Except in the realm of technique, the transition between one stage of artistic development and the next is a transition between incommensurables. In science, on the other hand, problems seem to be set by nature and in advance, without reference to the idiom or taste of the scientific community. Apparently, therefore, successive stages of scientific development can be evaluated as successively better approximations to a full solution. That is why the present state of science always seems to embrace its past stages as parts, which is what the concept of cumulativeness means. Guided by that concept, we see in the development of science no equivalents for the total shift of artistic vision – the shift from one integrated set of problems, images, techniques, and tastes to another.”
Kuhn disagrees with this cumulate e model of science:
If we are to preserve any part of the metaphor which makes inventions and discoveries new bricks for the scientific edifice, and if we are simultaneously to give resistance and controversy an essential place in the development of science, then we may have to recognize that the addition of new bricks demands at least partial demolition of the existing structure, and that the new edifice erected to include the new brick is not just the old one plus, but a new building. We may, that is, be forced to recognize that new discoveries and new theories do not simply add to the stock of pre-existing scientific knowledge. They change it. (Kuhn M2, p. 7)19
Often a decision to embrace a new theory turns out to involve an implicit redefinition of the corresponding science. Old problems may be relegated to another science or may be declared entirely “unscientific.” Problems that, on the old theory, were non-existent
or trivial may, with a new theory, become the very archetypes of significant scientific achievement. And, as the problems change, so, often, does the standard that distinguishes a real scientific solution from a mere metaphysical speculation, word game, or mathematical play. It follows that, to a significant extent, the science that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible, but often actually incommensurable, with that which has gone before. Only as this is realized, can we grasp the full sense in which scientific revolutions are like those in the arts. (Kuhn M1, pp. 17)
I don't necessarily see problem. Very often, when a physicist or a mathematician finds a solution to a problem, they describe it as "elegant". And what seems art to someone, may not look like art to someone else, which is common.
Of course science and art are different human activities, but human activities shouldn't be forced into one descriptive scheme alone. One can say that a cook has that dish "down to a science". Doesn't mean cooking is physics, but the way the cook does the plate is extremely precise and unique.
Also, physics, which is the "deepest science" we have, is described in equations, which very few people understand. To an ordinary person, a physics equation may look like random scribbles on a page. Not so to those who understand it.
From here, I think each person may take whatever views they have about art and science and argue one way or the other. I don't see a necessary conflict - while admitting they are different activities.
How do you react to Rorty’ observation?
“Most of Kuhn’s readers were prepared to admit that there were areas of culture—e.g., art and politics—in which vocabularies, discourses, Foucaultian epistémés replaced one another, and to grant that, in these areas, there was no overarching metavocabulary into which every such vocabulary might be translated. But the suggestion that this was true of the natural sciences as well was found offensive. Critics of Kuhn such as Scheffler and Newton-Smith thought of Kuhn as casting doubt on “the rationality of science.” They sympathized with Lakatos’ description of Kuhn as having reduced science to “mob psychology.”
(Rorty 1991, p. 47)
I'm not seeing it...
Do you know of a copy of Feyerabend's essay on line?
I don't have many problems with it.
I do think the phrase "scientific revolution" or specifically his "paradigm shift" (not mentioned in these quotes) to be way overused.
But aside from that, what he's saying looks fine to me.
:up: :100:
Me neither! But thats because I use my phone. You dont see it because you are no Aboriginal. I dont think the booklet is online.
Quoting Prishon
There doesn't even seem to be a translation. There's an opportunity!
And yet we can discuss Newtonian physics, despite having some grasp of modern physics.
If incommensurable means that we use different standards of judgement, then you may have a point; but if it means something like untranslatable, there will be odd consequences.
Maybe that's the point. All decent art is somewhat ambiguous. If we looked at science the same way, we would see the myth in it and back off if claims to truth.
I don't think that's true at all. Technique obviously differs with the materials that are used and the aims of the artist. Different mark-making will be found with the use of different materials, and to some degree, although not necessarily, with different subjects.
Composition is most important in all genres, and the aesthetic concern with the balance of hues and tones and shapes on the surface of the canvas, board, paper or wall is common to all genres.
Why cant I see the Aboriginal picture (by the way, they dont call themselves like that; the name is our namegiving).
I agree; art history makes sense. If "the transition between one stage of artistic development and the next is a transition between incommensurables" then it couldn't.
Kuhn is talking about change from one historical
movement to the next in the arts.
“We might argue all day whether or not the particular artist or poet or philosopher would feel the present state of art or poetry or philosophy to be an advance or a
retrogression from the days when he himself was a creative spirit. There would be no unanimity among us; and more significant still, no agreement between the majority view which might prevail and that which would have prevailed fifty years ago. (Conant 1957, p. 34)
It's Watarrka art, an example of dot painting. There's a story that dot painting developed after colonisation as a way of encoding sacred knowledge so that white fellas could not understand it.
But there are common themes that translate - see https://www.kateowengallery.com/page/Aboriginal-Art-Symbols
As to claims of objectivity... Nuh.
We can discuss and write about any period in cultural history, or our personal biographies, for that matter. And those who come after us can do the same. In each case , a reinterpreting of history occurs. There is no historical memory without revision. So useful translation happens, but it does not bring back a preserved past. It would be like trying to authentically recreate period music.
Yes.
That is, in true Feyerabendian style, once the sense is expressed it can be undermined. Anything goes.
Quoting Joshs
Sure; but it goes deeper than that, doesn't it. the revision, the interpretation, is not just historical but occurs even at the time in which events take place.
Science has a grain; moving in one direction is easier than the other. That might be a result of the expression of science being explicit.
The definitions of art and science have changed over the centuries, but in modern terms, art expresses something about human subjective experience, while science describes the world of the 5 senses. Science may benefit from creative thinking, but that doesn't make it an art form.
Putting the distinction in terms of subjective and objective experience doesn't help. The artwork is there, before you, as objective as a rock. Science expresses the human subjective experience. Art uses the five senses.
Better, perhaps, to talk in terms of explicit and implicit sense.
Think about the methods of making art and what purpose, if any, it serves, and vice versa (the same about science).
Fine, move from subject/object to purpose. That'd be an improvement.
Don't be condescending; that'd be an improvement.
The key here is that if you could set out in words what it is that a piece expresses, then there would be no need for the piece.
Art happens because words will not suffice.
I was thinking that in talking about this it would help to point to a particular kind of art. What you do with Warhol can't really be done with Rembrandt. We gather the two under the umbrella of art, but it's not totally clear that they're the same sort of thing. The Warhol experience didn't even exist back then. Rembrandt is all post-modernized now. Each age is its own?
Some art is about expressing subjective stuff, like Frida Kahlo. But is it all?
To the extent that a gothic cathedral is art, it's not expressing something subjective. It's objective idealism. Does science also follow along with the prevailing philosophy? I assume so. It would be strange if it didn't.
But what it expresses is not. What it expresses is as much the audience's interpretation as it is the artist's attempt to express something. Hence,
Quoting Noble Dust
Quoting Banno
Would science describe my experience of stubbing my toe as different than yours? Do the physics of my toe work differently than yours?
Quoting Banno
And science describes how they work, to the best of science's understanding.
And that isn't true of F=ma?
I'm of the persuasion that what art is and what it does changes so much over time that it becomes difficult to talk about art in a concrete form. It's easiest to understand "art" through the lens of the current zeitgeist, or one's personal, idiosyncratic lens, if you're out of touch with the zeitgeist. It's compounded by the fact that art from past centuries not only influences artists today, but their perception of what art is, as projected unto the art of the past, influences how they create now. It's a mess.
Which artist is expressing F=ma?
Yep. Well said. The topic is like a blender.
On the slow speed, we think of art and science as two avenues for expressing the zeitgeist, and history stretches out like a number line. One zeit flowing into the next
On the medium speed, we realize that we don't have an outer space vantage point on this. We're always locked in. The number line is part of our zeitgeist.
I don't know what happens on the hi speed. My blender broke.
Quoting Banno
Would you apply this same ‘radical relativism’ critique to postmodernists like Nietzsche , Focucault and Derrida?
Quoting Banno
I think Trumpists and other right wing extremists are arch-rationalists. That is , they embrace late medieval and early enlightenment forms of rationality.
Quoting Banno
Dialectical logic? God , the good , and other transcendent ends depend on the stability of the preferred choice. (better and better, more and more , closer and closer , richer and richer). But if preference and desire , in science as in other endeavors, is not directed toward anything but alterity , then the ‘good’ progress loses its stable sense.
So far as it fits. There are plenty of venture capitalist Nietzscheans.
Quoting Joshs
There are arch-rationalists amongst them, but for the most part I think their choice of philosophies are simply propitious. Anything goes that might serve achieving power.
Quoting Joshs
I prefer symbolic logic. The grain of science is in the direction of what works.
There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.[/quote]
You can't tell where science ends and poetry begins!
Ancient works on proto-science used to be written in verse I believe.
In my agreement:
“Cooking is an art; baking is a science.”
This being a common enough view among commoners (yes, I is a commoner too in this regard). It takes a philosopher that is far removed from the plebs to consider any meaningful difference between the two as gobbledygook. (And yes, one can easily find such via online searches of the proposition given.)
But a commoner such as myself would say that cooking’s success pivots on attention to the qualitative vagaries of gustatory aesthetics in the creation of food, whereas baking’s success pivots on a quantitative, calculating precision for the same end. This despite cooking also making due with precision in certain regards and baking with aesthetics in others.
If art is a science because, for instance, it involves certain ways of knowing - knowledge being what science translates into - and science is an art because, for instance, it involves intuitive faculties - which are requisite in the making of most hypotheses - then all artists are scientists and all scientists artists.
Do the plebian-removed philosophers not see the absurdity in this conclusion?
Wouldn’t it be better to start with the basics and consider why “art” and “science” are not synonyms?
Not every problem. The poetry of mathematics is in its elegance, a word easily spoken but not as easily defined.
I had in mind Wiles when he managed to give proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, he said that one part that wasn't making sense, but then he remembered something that gave him a solution, and he called it "elegant."
The novelist, who was also a capable mathematician, described some of the higher level stuff in math to be "elegant" too. I can't image it, because I lack that capability to be good at math, never mind these very high level equations.
Still, if they say so, I believe them. But it will be an elegance very few people appreciate and like you say, it would be hard to even explain in what this elegance consists of to people who don't know this kind of math.
:heart: The best answer!
Threads like this wouldn't exist if they did.
Also, I claim Plebeian-Removed as a future band name.
:grin:
Great Satriani clip, by the way!
Was it, though?
Well, I cant see the connection with Chris Martin exactly. I was sitting on the toilet hearing his guitar and it sounded great. Whats the connection with Coldplay?
You seem a bit drunk on having received any responses to your millions of threads. I don't know, maybe just calm down, eat some fruit or something.
Wasnt it you who responded to the question about the meaning of the song viva la vida?
Yes.
Well, maybe the guitar man has a wrong attitude towards people (thinking they all listened to him; it was the first time for me, already proving him wrong). But why he thinks viva la vida is a rip-off? I fail to notice.
:yikes: Honored, actually. But now I'm toying around with band name "Plebianesque" myself. Darn, they're getting really hard to find nowadays ... if anyone has tried to come up with a novel band name. :grin:
I'm new to the forum and late to this discussion and this being an internet forum of course I haven't read all the replies :smile: but "art expresses something about human subjective experience" is exactly it. Science is not art by definition, science is constrained, it is the process of making a hypothesis about a phenomenon and then testing that hypothesis, this is the constraint. Art is free to express whatever the artist wants, usually with the intent of expressing to others how the artists feels about some aspect of the human condition. You cannot know how it feels to be me and I cannot know how it feels to be you, what you see, what emotions you experience; art is a way of conveying those feelings, an attempt to bridge the explanatory gap.
In that sense I tend to think of art as the mathematics of emotion. Mathematics is an abstract way of conveying concepts about aspects of the physical world. Similarly art is an abstract way of conveying feelings.
Why you cannot? It makes me feel isolated.
For example we learn to associate the sky with the colour blue because people point at the sky and tell us that it is blue. There is no way for me to know what image forms in your brain to represent the colour blue, what you imagine as blue might be different to what I imagine to be blue. We all agree the sky is blue but we are isolated from each other's experience of blue.
It is the same for emotions, seeing someone falling over makes me feel their pain however there is plenty of evidence from the media that a lot of people seem to find it funny that someone fell over. We experience the same world in very different ways and art is one way of one person externalizing their feelings in a way that someone else might comprehend.