comparing and classifying.
Through an approach which combined technical and intellectual exercises, research in the West was reactivated during the Renaissance, paving the way for new fields of investigation. A progressive thought pattern slowly emerged.
Research methods varied from one discipline to another. Eighteenth-century physics was quantitative and deductive; nineteenth-century biology—for example, Darwin’s theory of evolution—was qualitative. Despite their common search for truth, the many domains of science proceeded at diverse paces, employing different methods and models.
Scientific innovation is scarcely conceivable without the assimilation of prior knowledge; established facts need to be re-evaluated. There are no specific criteria defining a breakthrough, that is, before experimental proof. Research picks up speed when different groups tacitly adhere to a scheme, as happens in art. And changes often take place in the midst of competition, passion and anxiety!
Science is no longer synonymous with a quest for the absolute truth, as recently developed theories of “chaos” and “uncertainty” suggest an inherent limit to knowledge itself. Scientific method divides reality into segments, which permits the examination of tiny cross-sections. This reduction is the great enabler of scientific success. All sciences, whether descriptive like botany, or structural like physics and mathematics, are contained within a “frame” which allows scientists to establish a logical order across a multitude of phenomena.
Science does not always follow a linear path. Breaks occur, such as with Newton’s physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Alexandre Koyré, a modern historian, considered that: “history is not the reverse progress of science, that is the study of outdated steps whose modern truth would be the vanishing point. It should, on the contrary, be an effort to research and explain to what extent ancient attitudes surpass previous notions in their own day.”
Relativity, Maurits Cornelis Escher, 1953
This lithograph by the Dutch artist Escher presents a visual paradox, combining three distinct perspective views into a coherent whole. According to the writer Arthur Koestler: “Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than van Gogh’s sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist’s discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer’s frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet.”
While developments in science can, by definition, quickly become obsolete, art at its best presumably never ages. Picasso said: “To me, there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present, it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.” In art, as in science, content might age, while the aesthetic dimension remains. Implicitly bound to the evolution of human thought, knowledge tends to develop in several areas simultaneously.
Taking, for example, the “evolution” of the pictorial style from Manet to Cézanne, some might consider that Cubism, which followed, is situated in a “logical” perspective. Could it then have developed under the brush of artists other than Picasso or Braque? One might raise the same question about Darwin or Einstein. The fact that similar discoveries often happen simultaneously in different places suggests that science holds the key to its own change. Why should things be different in art?
The history of ideas remains to be written; art and science have often evolved in similar ways, with phases of linear accumulation, stagnation and ruptures marked by ingenious discoveries.
3. Science in architecture
The Jonas Salk Biological Sciences Research Institute, La Jolla, California, designed by Louis Kahn between 1959 and 1965
Airports, nuclear plants and space stations are some of the twentieth-century architectural creations designed not merely to fulfill their functions, but as emblems of the age. A journalist once wrote about Kahn: “When architecture reaches the summit of its expression, it arouses a very peculiar thrill, a cool bliss which suddenly invests everything, and through which consciousness of a supremely formulated technical wisdom engages in a conflict with mystical tranquility.”
The unity of art and science
The mastery of fire was man’s chief prehistoric accomplishment. As the hearth became a place for social gatherings, cooking stimulated interest in the variety of plant and animal life used for paint, poisons and medicines. Fire led to the making of hard clay objects and tools. With the crudest of implements, beautiful sculptures were carved and stunning images produced.
La Dame de Brassempoy, c. 25,000 B.C.
Ivory, height: 13⁄8 in. (3.65 cm)
Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Astronomy, the mother of science, had its roots in prehistoric times, too. It was practiced by early hunters and gatherers: notches carved in artefacts suggest that Stone Age people detected patterns in the motions of the stars.
Astronomy and architecture were linked very early on and would remain so for thousands of years. By definition, architecture is an applied art with functional, technical and aesthetic requirements. It is also a major art in contrast to other applied arts which are generally considered minor.
At the dawn of civilization, people were already conceptualizing in art and science and designing their places of worship to reflect their ideas about the structure of the universe.
Incised bone record, c. 28,000 B.C., interpretation by Alexander Marshack
Long considered as decorations or records of successful hunts, these notches are now believed to constitute a calendar of lunar cycles.
Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
The transformation of society during the Stone Age marked a major cultural and technical upheaval. Agriculture and the way of life that it imposed called for the fixing of boundaries, which perhaps occurred independently in the Middle East, the Far East and other regions. Stone monuments were the architectural response.
In Europe, thousands of megalithic “card houses” were scattered across the continent. Long regarded as simple constructions consisting of one colossal flat stone resting on two rough pillars, such structures are now believed to have been the skeletons of richly decorated monuments.
Stonehenge, for example, was built and rebuilt over 1,000 years, with huge and heavy materials that had to be hauled over long distances in ways we still cannot fully understand. In its oldest known medieval reproduction, the circular complex—poetically supposed to have been master-minded by Merlin—is represented as a flat rectangle with all its triliths complete.
