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.
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.