Ann, Happy Holidays back.
Much of what you say is peruasive, and not arguable. It is interesting how much
of your commentary reflects often expressed truths, which you express
powerfully. .
While not debatable, could you elaborate on your last sentence?
As you may know, some of us are trying to address some of these questions from
a number of directions. My own effort is to seek fundamental connections
between the visual arts and physics. Art historians speak of "form and content"
(not entirely separable), content being the "story", and form representing what
the work of art has to say in its own terms.One of my objectives is to see deep
connections between the arts and sciences from the point of view of form.
Jack
J.R. Leibowitz
author of HIDDEN HARMONY: The Connected Worlds of Physics and Art (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2008).
[email protected]
.
----- Original Message -----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 2:52 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Science and Art
I am sorry for this delayed response to a recent thread. I often want to
participate but run out of time. Today however... Happy Holidays
"The Future of Science...Is Art?
To answer our most fundamental questions, science needs to find a place for
the arts."
Thank you for opening this thread for conversation. In many ways I couldn't
agree with this premise more. But I feel the connection can only be understood
when science and art are seen as equals. Equals? What could that mean?
1. I fear framing the question that "science needs to find a place for the
arts" reiterates a hierarchy between science and art that is not defensible and
that does not lead to a better understanding of either or how they are related.
More importantly it mis-states the nature of each, their relationship to one
another and the fundamentally different approach they offer for understanding
and living in the world. To be sure the complexity of the
distinction/interconnection between "creatively discovering" and "art making"
should not stop us from trying to understand both without creating a hierarchy
or power struggle between them.
As a starting point (and a gross simplification...)science's mission is to
discover how the world works not create a way for the world to work.
"Art and artists are more or less given the permission and the responsibility
to start anew, to build or create without specific responsibility for history
or precedence. Art as an activity can be as easily dedicated to the creation of
first principles and underlying assumptions as to the creation of paintings and
poetry." https://www.wkbank.com/knowledge/Civilization_as_an_Art_Form";
More problematic works of art may contain new principles that science is best
able to discover.
Science often progresses by more or less disqualifying and correcting an
earlier understanding and approach. One work of art regardless of when it was
created does not negate or devalue another work of art. All works of art more
or less add to the experience and understanding of anything.
What may go unnoticed here is that this ability of art to start anew and of
science to follow precedence to some discovery, when valued and looked at
carefully provides a check for and on the excesses of both science and art. It
could be said that art keeps the human world open and science keeps it from
flying apart.
2. By conflating the arts (the forms a work of art takes most often thought
of as painting, music, sculpture even new forms...) and art, (the generative
power, the human faculty-capibility of art making) art becomes limited to what
is sometimes referred to in Judaic tradition as commentary.
3. A question remains: what can art create that science cannot and what can
science discover that art cannot? And its corollary at what turn might art lead
and at what turn might science take a first step.
My sense is to create a new civilization as many are trying to do now we must
let art take the lead.
Ann Racuya-Robbins
Founder and CEO
World Knowledge Bank
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
