Art and Science: Common Threads

31 January 2008 by fatladysings

NPR on the collisions of art and science

Tucked into the third minute of this story is possibly the best
description of art’s purpose that I’ve ever heard:

…art is a way of taking people in between moments, in between
questions, in between answers, so they can intuit the movement of
imagination.

Visit Le Laboratoire here.

Also, the Morbid Anatomy blog points to a new article in Seed Magazine stressing the need for artists and scientists to work together:

If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress.

Both of these stories hint at the central discrepancy we perceive between art and science: Science requires answers, art doesn’t. I think the more we examine the so-called differences between these two types of thought, the more we will discover they are both in turn intuitive and empirical.