Good Science Approaches the Condition of Art
July 1st, 2007 Fred McVittie
The drive to create new knowledge is, presumably, rooted in the human universal desire to acquire that knowledge. Ultimately this is a cognitive imperative reinforced by the sense of pleasure accompanying discovery/creation, and the sense of stress accompanying not knowing. We try to know things because knowing feels good and not knowing feels bad. This equation of knowing and feeling is easily placed within an evolutionary narrative in which such a cognitive imperative would emerge as an adaptive trait. In fact it may be the most significant adaptive trait in the emergence of human being as we understand it. The implication of this relationship between knowing and feeling is that the acquisition of knowledge through research is, at heart, an aesthetic activity in which a satisfactory conclusion, outcome, or insight is arrived at because of the very satisfaction that accompanies it. The individual feelings which accompany research, in the context of scientific discovery for example, are reported by those involved to be a prime motivator in the continuance of that research, and the high points of these research processes in which significant breakthroughs or insights are made are spoken of in glowing experiential terms. This experience, the feeling of what happens during the research process, is indistinguishable from certain experiences in artmaking and other activity considered ‘expressive’, or as Suzanne Langer refers to it, as having ‘vital import’. At its best, research in all fields approaches the condition of art.
This idea is reminiscent of Robert Crease’s observation that scientific discovery and experimentation can be considered a ‘performance’, with the most profound and elegant research in the sciences achieving a standard he refers to as ‘artistic’.
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