"I don't really like science."

O conversaţie/paralelă între 6 oameni, 3 din domeniul artistic şi 3 din domeniul ştiinţific. Apar şi nişte comentarii personale pe acolo.

- So the point is that an aesthetic sense about the Universe is useful.

- "Art vs. Science" is about human imagination and scientists, they have to use their human imagination to get something right, whereas artists only have to get as far as having Brian Sewell going "That's very pretty". So - we put ourselves under less stress.

- Yeah, but it's really difficult to get Brian Sewell to say that, so that shows how tough art is.

- The word "truth" in both schemes means such different things. Cause truth in art is so blurry and vague; so Hamlet is a play which people consider to be very true about the human condition, but it's completely fictional - about a made-up person saying made-up things in a made-up situation. And yet we consider that made-up thing to be enlightening our actual lives; and that's how art works. So many paintings are mere dots, or they're blurry and because of the way the brain processes them they seem to say something to us in a truthful way. In science it's the exact opposite.

- Well I'm not sure that is though, actually. Just like I've been saying earlier on, "Is this the final theory?" - it's not! We know it's not the final theory cause we know there are things wrong with it. And so science is about creating fictions which happen to give us one way of predicting what's gonna happen.

- So you create the thing, the fiction, but then you test it?

- Right.

- But then it's not fiction anymore.

- It's fiction on the level that we don't really think, at least we certainly don't think at the moment that this is really how the Universe operates.

- Hang on, hang on. I'm old fashioned enough to believe in objective reality, I'm sorry. I agree that a lot of the methods and ways of thinking are the same; in a way art is a form of communication and can be used to communicate about science as well. But the thing with science is we continue pushing those imaginative and intellectual bits of our brains against this really confusing and counter-intuitive Universe where we can do experiments. We didn't discuss the experiment before, but that's the core of it really: the ideas can be the same. It's the fact that with one set of ideas you can go out and build an enormous machine and test to see if they've got anything to do with objective reality.

- And this is important, isn't it? With a scientific theory the judge, in some sense of its beauty and its success, is that you can test it against nature. Whereas what you said about Hamlet - it's a test against, i suppose, opinion. Is there an objective measure of worth in art? Or is it purely a statistical essence; a long as a lot of people agree that this is a great work then it's a great work... You can't measure whether something 's good art or not.

- Actually I think that's exactly right; I think it's subjective. I could think something is the best art that was ever made, that everyone else on the planet thought was terrible.

[I think this is a rather sad quality. And it's precisely why there are all these "modern" artists who bug the hell out of me. I actually appreciate modern art more than classical. I'd probably take some abstract sculpture over Michaelangelo, but I'm annoyed by all these people who do... nothing/random things, call it art and then complain how others simply don't "get" it. 

When appreciation of something is subjective, you COULD do just about any shit and somewhere in the world there'll be one sorry sap who thinks what a great artist you are. Because the world is an eclectic group of people... different people, with different lives, experience and opinions out there and you just have to name a random thing and there's bound to be a fan club somewhere. (there's a market for a magazine called - brace yourselves - "Walking"). 

 Returning to the point - you could take a piss on a canvas (I'm actually pretty sure it's been done) and some people will appreciate it. And it's not even odd: if you look at the pornographic/sexual deviances present in the world (and I'd like to mention a definition for deviance: it's not "sick" but rather "differs from the majority") the point I'm trying to make will be obvious. There are people out there who prefer getting off to scatophillia, so it's doubtful there isn't a single soul who'd appreciate the special "piss on canvas with pride". Sure there is. Not a lot of people, though... still: enough to make me an "artist". So how can I appreciate one who introduces himself or refers to himself as an "artist" before knowing more about him - what makes him tick? Why is he doing whatever he's doing? etc. I've come to associate being an "artist" with being "too lazy to get a proper job" and I feel most (most! not all) should consider their art a "hobby" rather than a job; this is the judgmental stereotype I'm not even fighting against. 

 Why? Because I'm pretty sure most of them are like that. Sure, they feel they have a calling, they feel some things awaken deeply rooted feelings which they simply must get out, yet... this just in: ALL of us are like that. People tend to think way more than they should that they're special, different, their problems are unique, none feel the way they do. And even though it looks like I'm ranting - I'm not. The previous statement is an accepted fact; one I've had to face (and accept) myself, in troubled times no less. Wasn't easy, but it sure made my days lighter once I've embraced it. (I will come back to this in one of the next blog entries)

*I admit primarily thinking about painters while writing this down, but I could mix other professions in.]

And I could be the only person; but because it's subjective and that's the art that speaks to me I'm absolutely right and noone could ever contradict that. Comedy is a perfect example, whether you consider it an art form or not. You can be in a room with 3.000 people watching a comedian and if you're the one person not laughing you will go out and say to someone "yeah, he wasn't funny". You won't go "He was funny to everyone but me". They're all wrong. He wasn't funny.

- There didn't use to be this divide. There wasn't a divide between science and art

- No, cause religion was answering these questions and art was tangled up in religion as well.

- When did this divide occur? Cause I think "human imagination" - that's what this is about. And when people get worried about "should I like science or art?" I go "No, you should just be interested in the world!" I meet more scientists who are also interested in art, whereas I quite often meet art peple who go "I don't really like science.".