Art and Science
This page is one of the explanatory pages for my website, http://www.CardinalKnowledge.org. The website is a work in progress, and each and every part of it is open for discussion. The comments to these explanatory pages are where this discussion is to take place.
Although art relies on seemingly irrational qualities of perception, while science appears to be full of reason and sense, in fact, science and art overlap considerably. Early artists were the first scientists moreso than they were philosophers. While the philosophers soared high in the world of ideas, artists mixed clays, made new pigments, studied materials, learned anatomy, history, and culture, all to make their works of art more powerful. Leonardo da Vinci is a great example of a person in whom science and art merged; he believed that only through detailed study of anatomy can he represent human emotions and expression, and his Mona Lisa became the most well-known painting of all time. A great deal of scientific disciplines emerged from art or were improved by the artists – from anatomy and chemistry to physiology and psychology of perception.
On the other hand, creations of science often appeal to human senses and emotions just as the creations of art, even if there was no artist behind them other than a scientist who saw beauty in a subject of study. Images of the far-off galaxies and microscopic crystals and molecules, purely mathematical intricacy of the fractals and mind-boggling symmetries of complex creations of geometry grace the walls of homes and galleries on par with the best of the human-made paintings.
I’ve picked the fractals, aquatic life forms, and the images of deep space as examples of art found in the world of science, and I had to acknowledge M.C.Escher, the artist famously inspired by science.