Week 1: Two Cultures
I don't believe in ascribing myself to the category of "artist" or "scientist". In fact, I find that I am neither artist nor scientist, as unnecessary labels and the stereotypes associated with them are more limiting than they have any right to be.
Charles Percy Snow's concept of the existence of "Two Cultures", especially in the context of education, is certainly true; the schism between what we define culturally as "art" and what we define as "science" has only become more profound, to the extent that some may consider them antonymous (Snow 18). The coining of the term "science" in the mid-19th century by William Whewell and its later recognition by the compilers of the Oxford dictionary to specify "physical and experimental science" demarcates a point in time when the split between the two cultures was recognized (Vesna 121).
It seems apparent that this cultural division is a product of post-Industrial society, a point recognized by Sir Ken Robinson during a talk at the Royal Society for Arts. During the European Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, the term "Renaissance man", in Italian, Uomo Universale, coined by Leon Battista Alberti, embodied an individual who was educated in many areas of knowledge. Some of the most notable figures of the period, the best known being Leonardo da Vinci, possessed ability in the fine arts, science, engineering, literature, and music. Alberti himself was an accomplished painter and poet, as well as a scientist and mathematician. Even earlier examples arise from the Islamic Golden Age, with the Persian scientist, theologian, author, and mathematician Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and from Ancient Greece, wherein philosophy existed at the intersection of art and science. Comparatively, a modern scientist falls into a stereotype of being, purely, a person of science, with several overarching connotations that fit them neatly into some popular conception. A similarly damning phenomenon exists with artists (Vesna). The dichotomy can thereby be recognized as the product of a cultural shift. |
| The School of Athens https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22 The_School_of_Athens%22_by_Raffaello_Sanzio_da_Urbino.jpg |
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| BLS Mean Wage by Occupation https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm. |
Art is less profitable because people now care less about the aesthetics and more about "science", wherein tangible progress can be identified and "technology" can be developed. Like Kevin Kelly expresses in his article "The Third Culture", science and technology have captured the public's interest at large, while the perception of the fine arts has shifted towards pretenses of pretentiousness and elitism (Kelly). Many who choose to immerse themselves purely in one discipline turn their noses up to the other. Even more concerningly, the vast majority concerns themselves with contributing to neither art nor science, and those who do value art tend to value money more. This is an unfortunate but inevitable characteristic of post-modern society. Whether social structures could be changed such that the value of art supersedes incurred financial expense on a such a scale that allows the pursuit of it to be sustainable in and of itself is a question that cannot be answered at the moment. However, to either fault academia or to see it as a savior in this regard is to shift focus away from human nature. Now, on a purely personal basis, I am a Business-Economics student at UCLA, and I've found that in my academic journey, I have unknowingly chosen to situate myself with the "Third Culture", at the intersection of sciences and arts. My pursuit of knowledge is not purely theoretical, or even limited to what many students here see as "hard sciences". Neither is my coursework entirely focused on "soft sciences", social applications of economic theory. Indeed, many of the classes I have chosen to take immerse me in arts, history, and philosophy. Now, being caught between the beautiful, effective, and economic way of doing things, I understand how most anything is interdisciplinary, and find little value in studying a subject in a vacuum (Hubbard 101). In striving to become an educated individual that exceeds my even own standards, I have come to find meaning in understanding both arts and sciences, and little distinction between the two.
Ultimately, I am of the belief that most, if not all disciplines, lie in between the "Two Cultures". Even the most science-oriented fields such as physics, pure mathematics, and chemistry, entail tremendous practical, social, and artistic applications, just as the most art-oriented fields, like linguistics, musicology, and film, have underpinnings derived from principles of science and logic. In no capacity can art exist without science, nor can science without art; as divided as people may perceive them, they are inexorably linked. And as much as blame can be levied onto academic institutions for instilling within students the notion of a polarization between sciences and humanities, only at an individual's discretion can they choose to discard the concept of a "Third Culture" by remarrying the literary and scientific disciplines into the unity they've shared throughout history.
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| Isaac Asimov's Nemesis https://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/9780553286281_p0_v1_s600x595.jpg |
Snow, Charles Percy. The two cultures and the scientific revolution: The Rede Lecture, 1959. University Press, 1959.
"TwoCultures pt2." Youtube, uploaded by UC Online, 31 Mar. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUr4xxZ_0gw&feature=emb_title.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Overview of BLS Wage Data by Area and Occupation." Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2020, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm.
Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, 2001, pp. 121–125.
This was a very thorough analysis of the separation between art and science. The examples you gave of "Renaissance men" from the past provided strong support for your point that the separation between the two cultures has increased over time. I agree that the university level is a good place to start fixing this, but that we also need a cultural shift in society to truly fix the problem. Hopefully over time more people can understanding that science and art can't exist without each other, as you put it.
ReplyDelete-Daniel Barajas