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RE: Is the distinction of art & science hurting the education system?
I think a fundamental difference between art and science is that science must be verifiable. Art can be literally anything at all, but science needs to adhere to strict rules in order to advance itself. Of course many things that people label science are actually art (see nanoputians), but I think it is important to distinguish science so that it retains the standards it currently has.
Hi @curtiscolwell, thanks for taking the time to read through the post and make a comment because every feedback I get helps me to further clarify my thoughts. You bring up an interesting point about science needing to be verifiable. As a former scientist I see many recent debate about the reproducibility of many experiments being questioned, which is to say that the process used to verify and review those papers are not quite as verifiable as one might assume. Interestingly enough, proving the provenance of a piece of artwork underpins a large part of the process involved in auction and secondary art markets, but it is also not free from the occasional cases of fraud. But the point I want to raise with you is this: what part of science do you believe needs to be verified (and to whom), and why is this not necessary in art? Is science the process, the end result or the purpose (or all three) and does it not apply to art?
Oh, and I just read about the nanoputians. It seems like an interesting blend of art and science to me because some people will see it more as art and others more as science, which means it must have some proportion of each (whatever they think art or science should be). I think they are the same thing but I don't have a word for what art + science equals :p
Well, I guess I would say that science is trying to learn something about the universe and its laws. To be science you need to have a testable hypothesis that you can disprove. An example would be something like gravity. No one has thus far disproved the hypothesis of gravity. Every time you let go of something, it falls towards the earth. Art has none of this. You can only learn about the artist or yourself. You won't learn about the nature of the universe.
I guess nature is an interesting intersection between art and science then. There are also some things that science can't quite measure or test, but that doesn't mean it is something that cannot be proven. And people also form part of the universe so certainly learning about an artist or oneself is part of learning about the nature of the universe?