I think a great case could be made to show that artists and scientists are not normal people. Normal people are conformist and unimaginative, at least in abstract conceptualization. A normal artist is a mediocre artist who thinks copying is creating. A normal scientist is just not a scientist but at best a numb technician.
Exceptional, creative people, drawn to fields where the standards are so high as to be almost unrecognizable until after the fact, until they are set by some new excellence. Normal people need not apply for the artist or scientist job. They should be satisfied to be amateurs and appreciators or even informed laymen. I've been around real artists and scientists nearly my whole long life and I am certain that they are not normal in the usual sense of the term. Normalcy is tranquil and safe, commonplace. The bland average or norm is the measure of normalcy. But the strangeness of the creative is dangerous, foolhardy, odd, committed, obsessed. Neither condition -- normalcy nor creative -- has anything to do with happiness but I am reminded of Einstein's remark that "happiness is for pigs". Anytime I hear normal as the necessary condition for the creative endeavors, I shudder and think of the social horrors inflicted upon creative people by the blindingly mediocre hordes of normal people who insist that they are just as creative as real artists or scientists and could do their work if they chose. Nope, you don't need to be really nuts to be a serious artist or scientist but you need to enter that realm, and leave it at will. In other words, abnormality -- or the a-normal -- is a requirement . Normal people will never understand this argument because, well, they're normal. WC ________________________________ From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 9:37:00 AM Subject: Re: Architecture and Philosophy: Review Frances wrote: > There seems to be more similarities between art and science than there are > differences. They are for example both acts of only normal humans, and tend > to be engaged in naturally by instinct without any undue nurturing. There > however seems to be a clear deference, if not a clear difference, between art > and science. Science is likely driven to take objects by intelligence and > knowledge. Who or what is doing the driving? This is not a silly quibble about the passive voice: If science is an exercise of the mind ("intelligence," "knowledge"), then how is the motivation chosen by the person? hHow is it put into operation? What does the human do (choose, decide, etc.) in order to initiate the scientific approach (being "driven")? > Art is given uncontrolled to sense for its own sake solely alone. Art need > only appeal to primitive emotional feelings in the complete absence of even > any primal knowledge. Again, who or what is doing the giving? Is art exclusively a human product? Or are there some artifacts or artworks that are not made by humans? If art is solely a human product, how is it "given," which implies it's outside the human who receives it? > Art initiates in life as being an essential part of the normal human > organism, and thus readily prepares for science, because science cannot > generate itself without the human being and its artistic initiation, along > with such acts as creation and invention and innovation. You seem to imply that the human making of art is a precursor to human science ("really prepares for science"), somewhat like ancient religions engendered alchemy and astrology, which led to the sciences of chemistry and astronomy; that the fabricating of images led to more ordered organization of knowledge, which led to science as we understand the term. Is this a fair summary of your understanding? > For science to consume art is not for science to embrace art totally, but > rather for science to be guided by art. While humans likely cannot survive > and thrive without the act of art, which they will engage in despite > themselves, they can exist quite well without the act of science, aside from > their primal intelligence and innate curiosity to know the stuff around them. This is a rather sweeping assertion: art is essential to human survival but science is not. On what basis do you make a distinction between the objects of "primal intelligence and innate curiosity," which you seem not to deem organized knowledge, and "the act of science," which is? > Art is limited as to what objects can be art, but once objects are smartly > agreed to be art, the works and say their beauty will likely remain as art > virtually forever. Science ironically is not limited as to what objects can > be science or that it can study, but its objects are variable and its truths > are very fallible. It might thus be held that real applied instrumental art > is exact formal fundamental science. This is an intriguing proposition: "art" is limited by what can be art, but science is not so limited--i.e., all objects can be studied in science. Thus, we're back to my original question: In your view of the matter, what is the difference between art and science? And what is the limitation of "what objects can be art"? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected]
