Mary-Katherine Alger
Elisha Emerson
ENG 110
5 November 2018
From Water to Watercolor: How Can Art and Science Help Each Other?
It is often thought that art and science are on two opposite ends of a spectrum, that there is a dichotomy between these two disciplines. However, is this true? Art and science are certainly different, but that does not mean that they cannot work together. Artists and scientists have a lot to learn from each other and could benefit greatly from interacting more often. Science could benefit from art in gaining a whole understanding of something and public perception, and art could benefit from science through inspiration and collaboration with scientists. Science and art may not be compatible in all ways, but if they work together, both sides can benefit from the relationship.
One of the ways that the arts can help everyone, especially those in science fields, is through a teaching of empathy. Often, science deals with the quantitative aspects of something; 1 in x children in America are hungry, xxx,xxx people in America are homeless, xx% of women has experienced sexual assault in their life. These statistics are effective for grasping the range of an issue, but oftentimes they leave out the most important part: what it’s actually like to live with hunger, or homelessness, or to be sexually assaulted. The whole issue can’t be understood without understanding the experiences of people first. This part of the equation can be best understood through the artistic medium, whether it be someone writing about their experiences, creating a painting to convey the emotions of the experience, or any other form of art. When someone experiences art, oftentimes it can help them empathize with the subject of the art, to feel what they feel and to experience what they experience. This empathy simply can’t be felt through statistics or numbers. This stance has even been supported by scientific evidence. In “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education”, Yo-Yo Ma states that, “Advances in neurobiology make it clear that we humans have dual neural pathways, one for critical thinking and one for empathetic thinking. Only one pathway can be activated at a time, so when one is on, the other is off. Yet we are also aware that wise and balanced judgement results from integrating the critical and empathetic, taking emotions as well as reason into account.” Science and critical thinking are only half of what makes someone understand something and the other half is art and empathy. Art and science, critical thinking and empathy, can create a greater understanding of something, but only when they are used together to achieve the same goal.
Another way that science could benefit from cooperation with art is scientists using art to both understand and convey their scientific theories and findings. This would mainly be through using metaphors or visual aids to help understand theories about things that humans can’t normally understand, like the size of things in the universe or quantum mechanics. This kind of understanding through art has precedent in pre-existing theories, such as Schrodinger’s cat in quantum observance. They have also been understood through visual art, as with Neil Bohr’s understanding of electrons. “What Bohr maintained was that the form they took depended on how you looked at them. Their very nature was a consequence of our observation. This meant that electrons weren’t like little planets at all. Instead, they were like one of Picasso’s deconstructed guitars, a blur of brushstrokes that only made sense once you stared at it.” More complex scientific theories are often difficult to understand, not only for people who are not in the field, but also for the people who actually create the theories. This cooperation between science and art must be continued to further the understanding of the universe.
The true combination of these two disciplines would be a STEAM education – Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. In his essay, “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education” Yo-Yo Ma discusses the possibility of a STEAM education. He states that, “The arts teach us that there is something that connects us all and is bigger than each of us. In both places it is a matter of equilibrium, of centering the ego at the right point of balance between the individual and the community. We are all addressing the same issues with different names attached to them. STEAM will help us get there by resolving the education problem. Kids will then go to school because it is a passion and a privilege, not a requirement.” Essentially, an arts education should be required for STEM majors, because it fosters empathy and understanding of the world. While I do agree that arts classes would be beneficial to all people, regardless of major, and may even make some enjoy school more, I’m not sure if a STEAM education is what’s best for all students. Students’ time is a finite resource, and any change to the curriculum has to reflect that. A curriculum that integrates art would likely have to add more art classes, which would mean either taking away classes that people need to be competent in their field, or taking away opportunities for a minor or double major. Also, while having art classes may make some students more enthusiastic about school, not all students care about or like art. For them, art classes would just be another class they dread taking. Although a STEAM education for students is a wonderful idea, it just isn’t feasible to implement it in all cases.
Science must be careful not to let art taint its pursuit of objectivity. While art can be used to gain a better understanding of something, it should not be a replacement for hard data, but rather a supplement. Some have suggested that art should be used as data in the scientific method when it comes to certain fields such as physics or psychology. In “The Future of Science… Is Art?” Jonah Lehrer argues just this. He states that, “Isn’t our inner experience full of gaps and non-sequiturs and inexplicable feelings? In a sense, the messiness of the novel and the abstraction of the painting is actually a mirror.” This may sound like it should work, however, this kind of subjectivity is incompatible with how science operates. In “We Must Protect U.S. Investment in Scientific Knowledge” Mark B. Boslough states that, “A good scientist does not allow personal feelings to get in the way of evidence.” The preservation of the scientific method and objectivity is crucial to science – without it, we can’t even call it science, but psuedoscience. Even within the softer sciences, if we were to let our personal feelings mix with the results, then nothing could be truly known as fact. The subjectivity of art can’t and shouldn’t be mixed in with the objectivity of science. what we feel is true shouldn’t be confused with what is actually true. In science, nothing is as useful as hard data, and diluting that pool of knowledge with opinions will only lead to more misinformation and miseducation of the general public.
The education of people about science is especially vital when it comes to issues like climate change. As misinformation continues to be spread among the general population, it is incredibly important that people know what is fact and what is not. This perception of science as untrustworthy has effects on other things, too, namely citizen science. Citizen science is when scientific organizations use the help of everyday citizens to conduct research. This strategy is prevalent in some forms of marine research, because so many things have to be monitored for changes from climate change, and research can be as simple as counting how many of something are in an area or measuring the size of individuals in a population. The education of people about science would help the scientific community greatly, and an effective way to do this would be to employ artists to create educational pieces about how people can participate in science and why they should. This would help not only in citizen science, but also when it comes to getting funding and voting for people who believe in science. The more educated the public is about how science works and why it’s important the better, and art and advertisement are effective ways to do this.
In a time when public support for science is waning, real scientific research needs to be supported more than ever. An effective way to do that would be to promote scientific findings through art. Art could be created, whether it be paintings, posters, books, or movies, that educates people about climate change, the importance of vaccination, or citizen science. There are likely already artists who care deeply about the wellbeing of science and are promoting it on their own accord, but it would be incredibly effective to have these kinds of pieces sponsored by scientists. Not only would this increase the likelihood that an artist would create art about the topic, but it may also increase the accuracy of the piece of art, as they could work directly with scientists who may have more knowledge than they do about it. If science was promoted like this, it would increase the scientific education of the public, and might even make some people interested in participating in research. Overall it would benefit both parties, as artists would get paid for talking about something they are passionate about, and scientists would work towards their goal of educating humanity.
Art and science each have their own unique advantages. Science may be able to state facts and objectivity, but art’s subjectivity and reach may be able to help with overall understanding and education. Although each should be considered separately in most scenarios, the collaboration of artists and scientists is vital to the improvement of both disciplines. Right now, science and art rarely interact. However, in the future, science and art should strive to work together to improve humanity.
Works Cited
Boslough, Mark B. “We Must Protect U.S. Investment In Scientific Knowledge”. APS News, 1996, https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199603/investment.cfm. Accessed 23 Oct 2018.
Lehrer, Jonah. “The Future of Science…Is Art?”. Seedmagazine.Com, 2018, http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_future_of_science_is_art/. Accessed 23 Oct 2018.
Ma, Yo-Yo. “Necessary Edges: Arts Empathy, and Education.” Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers. edited by Barclay Barrios. 3rd ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2016, pp 257-261.
