Don’t they both succeed by attention to detail and the discerning of underlying patterns? Aren’t a sense of wonder and an insatiable curiosity essential to both? Don’t science and art both proceed by intuitive leaps?
These are all true. However, I think the main difference is that in the sciences, a certain degree of rigor is required. In art, rigorous and accurate rendering is important, but not necessarily required.
To take a different tack, I have noticed that the artists who draw the biggest differences between art and science are the ones who avoided science when possible. Almost every artist and writer I have met who also took the time to understand science finds them similar. Anecdotal I know, but for me it indicates that the seperation between art and science is psychological.
In my opinion, humble as it may be, I would describe science as understanding through the pursuit of knowledge, while art can be seen as understanding through the pursuit of beauty.
Then of course I may be way off base on this too…
Aside from the fact that science relies upon deductive reasoning and art relies more heavily upon inductive reasoning and being a bit of artist and scientist myself, I would rather say that they are two sides of the same coin.
Why were they ever together? They seem more or less unrelated to me.
You know it’s trouble when someone starts quoting Rush:
Science, like nature
Must also be tamed
With a view
Toward its preservation
In my opinion, the line between science and art begins to be crossed when folks start relying on instruments instead of the good ol’ mark-one eyeball.
Which would you prefer, an Acura NSX or a Jaguar XKE? Both vehicles embody high performance (though built thirty years apart, the two have remarkably similar statistics), but one car is obviously a college professor while the other is a drunken soccer fan. Or at least it’s built by one. Did I have a point here? If you happen to spot it, please drop it into any mailbox and I’m sure it will get back to me torreckly.
For one thing, repeatability is considered a good thing in in science, and a bad thing in art. Science is fundamentally based upon the belief that there is a right answer. The end result is where all importance comes from; the process is important only to the extent that it affects the result. We may all have different methods and different ways of looking at things, but if our methods get different answers then someone is doing it wrong. Art, however, is the opposite. The end result is important only to the extent that it reflects the process. And if two people get different results, that shows that they’re both doing it right.
So explain the fugue form in music. And Andy Warhol.
The fugue is more closely related to quantum mechanics. Andy Warhol is more closely related to diesel mechanics.
Science comes from our brains and our logic. Art comes from our emotions. They are not mutually exclusive, in fact, sometimes they combine in a most joyful way.
Artists have been purveyors of science since the beginning, always using the most advanced tools and techniques (and inventing new ones - thanks to Michelangelo and DaVinci) given by latest science knowledge. Art without some understanding of the science of how the art is made has little use.
Today, many artists make their living with computers. If that fact doesn’t connect the two than perhaps this does: both art and science seek to define the world, achieve understanding and find truth through their respective media.
And let’s never discount music as art, where musicians have throughout history used the latest science to create.
And there is as much emtotion in science as there is in art (scientists must be passionate about their science, don’t they?) and as much as logic in art as in science (perspective, color use, harmony, positive/negative… all very logical constructs).
Yes, there are many similarities. One enriches the other.
However, in the end, science is an objective method for explaining the way nature/the universe works. Science is a tool and art is an expression. The subjectivity of art would not be useful in the scientific method (although the artistic eye of a scientist may help in his/her particular research…e.g., identifying patterns, communicating concepts, etc.)
Yes, Wrath. Now we are getting somewhere.
It is, I suppose, the separation of the scientist and artist that I am asking about. When I attended primary and secondary school (brief period, though it was), art and science were not taught as being connected in any way.
And my experience with university students has not, for the most part, shown me that post-secondary institutions encourage any cross-pollenization of science and art.
Does this perceived dichotomy have its roots in the Industrial Revolution? Has technology driven us into the strange hubris of specialization; i.e, do we believe that as a race our store of knowledge has grown so great that no one person can hope to be able understand more than one small area?
I’ve taken Art classes in high school and through college, and I can happily say that science is alive and well in: zinc platemaking and printing, photography (chemical baths), animation, perspective drawing, silk screening, airbrushing, and of course computer generated fine art. Good understanding of anatomy is necessary for freehand drawing the human face and body, and for medical illustration. There is nothing UNscientific about art!
There isn’t a single major scientific discovery that doesn’t impact the art world at some point, whether directly (tools, techniques, chemistry of media) or indirectly as inspiration.
A lot of the separatist arguments revolve around the “quantitative” nature of science and the “qualitative” nature of art. I say, both are both, and each elevates the other toward better understanding and wisdom of our world.
I like what you are saying Wrath, but I don’t know if I agree with it. When I think of science I tend to think of the quest for knowledge, the process, rather than just the tools it has resulted in. By your arguments, science is intimately involved in the arguments of the so-called Creation Scientists, because they use word processors and the internet to dissemminate their message.
The process of art creation is certainly not the same as the process of science; if I implied this, then I apologize.
Many forms of art take advantage of the latest science, and as such it helps the artist to have a good understanding of the science involved. This in no way implies that art is held to the rigors of scientific testing, although any good artist will test himself and ask himself some tough questions about his own creation (no offense to the lack of the use of “her”, please).
If you make the correlation to Creationists, then you are saying that they are making art, not science 
Aha! That’s why they are called con artists!
If nothing else, I am becoming more and more aware of my own sloppy phrasing… I’ll try to boil down the question to what it maybe shoulda bin in the first place.
Are there so few (are there any?) scientists who actively pursue art, and vice versa, because we, as a society, believe that the human is only capable of making significant contributions in one field of endeavour?
Actually, there are many scientists that who are amature artists. Most of the mathmaticians and physicists I know are also musicians for instance. However I don’t think it is so much that our society thinks that you have to be one or the other so much as it is to be great at either can take years of practice and dedication. You don’t just pick up a book on particle physics and understand it, just as you don’t pick up a paintbrush and create the Mona Lisa, or even throw a 90 mph fastball. All take time to develope, and there is only so much time to develop skills at first.
Feynmann for instance was very artistic, developing a decent set of musical and drawing skills later in life.
Fine. Art uses science.
But does science use art?