to the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio’s Saint Paul on
the Road to Damascus. Leaving aside the fact that
much of that art was sanctioned by theocracies
or religious authorities, this was mainly because
religion was such an obvious subject for the
painter/writer/sculptor due to their own immersion and knowledge of it, but also because they
could rely on the audience’s expansive common
knowledge of the symbolism of religion. Ancient friezes on churches have symbolic connotations that are lost upon us now-a-days — they
are essentially written in a vanishing language.
The public conceptual richness of religion allowed for continual exploitation by artists — all
of it was used by artists to communicate their
own ideas and inspirations.
But now the educated elite are marked not by
their knowledge of Latin, but their knowledge
of programming. And science has had three
hundred years to build its concepts, terms, and
influence — and these have all become common knowledge over the last one hundred. You
would be hard pressed to find such conceptual
structures as rich in symbolism as the staircase
curl of a double helix. It represents the material
bounds of life as much as the cross represents
the immaterial bounds of life. And people trust
science — they put, as it were, their faith in
it, just as much as historically many have put
their faith in the church. Not only are scientific
symbols and themes powerful and structured in
the same manner as the religious, they are also,
we suppose, true. This puts the educated citizen of the modern day in exactly the same daily
relationship with science as an educated citizen would have had with religion four hundred
years ago. Both operate as a set of shared symbols, concepts, narratives, valuable not merely
because they are complex and useful, but for
their assumed truth.
Of course, this could be uncharitably characterized as merely an argument for relevancy. To
be relevant — as if great art does not create its
own relevancy — and to be publicly-accessible,
is necessary for art. But of course, this may then
seem as if art is essentially acquiescent to science. Like an obsequious suitor, it can court
science to gain its relevancy. This is not what
I mean here — I mean that art should concern
itself with science, that is, to take science as its
subject matter with the same confidence as it
took to the public domain of religion through-
SciArt in America August 2013
out civilization, and for essentially the same
reasons — to communicate within an available
structure.
So why is scientifically orientated art relatively rare — whether it be visual art, literature,
drama, music, or dance? I think, fundamentally,
the artists who reject science as an inappropriate subject are afraid. Science is so truthful, so
powerful at stripping away illusions and falsehoods and folk understandings. Dan Dennett
described Darwinism as “universal acid,” dissolving everything it comes in contact with, but
he might as well have been taking about science in general. I think fundamentally, perhaps
unconsciously, those who scoff at an art based
in science are worried that art, and the humanities in general, are liable to be exposed as being
somehow fraudulent — or becoming reduced
and inconsequential — just by coming in contact with science. The idea that art should
insulate itself from science, protecting itself like
a moth that dies under contact from a touch,
drastically underestimates the power of art to
subject phenomena to analysis and drastically
overestimates the necrotic power of science.
And this idea comes from a confusion between
the methodology of science as carried out by
scientists, and the scientific aspect of our daily
lives. Ultimately, such a stance denies of art its
appropriate purview, which is of both the beautiful and the true.
Erik P Hoel is
a neuroscience
PhD candidate
and a fiction
writer.
Erik P Hoel, Contributor
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