Science as Art?

Art and science exist in the popular imagination at different ends of the spectrum of human achievement. Science rests on the systematic study of the world around us, its orderly permissions move us toward generalizable conclusions. Science requires the application of rigorous methods, in a way that is replicable by others, incrementally building on what has been discovered in previous decades. Art is our paradigm of human imagination and creativity. The best shatters convention with work that pushes us to look at the world in altered and distinctive ways. Science relies on the old virtues of austerity, sobriety, logic, and intellectual complexity. On the other hand, we think of art as spontaneous and impulsive, valuable when what it produces is beautiful, daring. Scientists are trained to weigh in on the truth or falseness of believers’ claims; artists sidestep facts for the emotionally compelling. We divide the academy into arts and sciences, and we imagine little archetypal overlap between scientists and artists. The scientist is the methodical thinker, while the artist thinks outside the box. 

But perhaps there is more to the intersection of art and science, and a consideration of their similarities may lead to new observations about science, the subject of this series of essays. We suggest four instructive areas of commonality.

First, the forms of art—be they painting, sculpture, dance—all rest on histories in the field, the accumulation of decades of craft and knowledge that are then rendered as art by novel and imaginative expression. The same is true for science. The methods of science build incrementally on what has been done in the past, with consensus on how we approach our work so that we can convince ourselves—and the field—of the validity of the science. But it takes imagination to ask the right question, and skill to design a study that provides a useful answer to that question. 

Art and science open our thinking, lead us to new places, generate new questions, providing not answers and ends, but beginnings

Second, while science indeed needs to be replicable, the best science needs also to see the world differently from the way it has been seen in the past. While the colorful historical anecdotes—the Aristotelian Eureka moment, e=mc²—serve to illustrate this point, advancing science by breaking free from previous molds pervades the work of the best scientists. Any system of thought accumulates biases and ways of doing what it does; science is not immune. In fact, one of the uses of science is to help us re-examine our own biases. What rises to the top in science is work that thinks differently, and looks at problems in unusual ways. That may take the field a bit of time to digest, but the best science, like art, arises from breaking—not preserving—molds. That is not in contradiction with rigor and meticulous application of good technique, but is also characteristic of good and groundbreaking art.

Third, the processes of doing science and art are similar. Beyond an understanding of history, both require craft, revision, iteration, intention, discipline, patience, and attention to implication. Scientists and artists are both after discovery. And both are often left to their own devices to choose what interests them, how, and how much to work on it.

Finally, scientists want to be recognized, to earn the attention of their contemporaries, to transform the way other scientists think. Artists, too. In each case, success depends on the responses of others; artistic audiences are moved, and scientific audiences appreciate the power of some work to change the course of human affairs.

Art aspires to beauty. There is a whole field of inquiry into the epistemology of beauty, that we will not dwell on here. However, we take beauty to mean the evocation of emotions that appreciate a particular product. There is perhaps no such thing as objective beauty, but we value, we appreciate, what elevates our senses. The best science does much the same. The best science is compelling, provoking other scientists to follow threads, to chart new paths. Art and science open our thinking, lead us to new places, and generate new questions, providing not answers and ends, but beginnings. Science translated to the broader world can launch companies and capture imaginations. Just think of the recent explosion of interest in artificial intelligence, which for a long time has existed as an area of scholarship that then captures the public—and our collective commercial—imagination.

Science is about the creation of the new, ideas that are beautiful, and that rest on inspiration and skill. So is art. In both fields, innovation is fueled by a tradition of innovation. Both depend on the protection of the liberal values of free speech and debate. Perhaps the two are not that different after all, but rather serve as our pre-eminent forms of human expression and capacity, advancing who we are as a species.

Previously in Observing Science: Scientific Sentences of Certainty