Art Cannot Scientifically Be Known

The following is an essay I submitted for a writing contest at Northern Arizona University. The topic was, "The Limits of Scientific Knowledge." Enjoy.

Art Cannot Scientifically Be Known

Throughout history, science, or, more precisely, the implementation of the scientific method, has uncovered many mysteries of the universe and explained much of nature’s previously unknown workings. For example, the implementation of the scientific method has allowed scientists to understand the water cycle. Science has also revealed principles that have been the springboard for modern technology. Indeed, we owe the invention of the telegraph, the automobile, the computer and countless other modern technologies to the work done by scientists. But how far can science take us? Can science, and the methods that science espouses, eventually reveal everything about nature and answer every question put forth by the minds of humans?

These are tough questions. They are questions that philosophers, theologians, scientists and other thinkers have grappled with for ages. And here I am, another thinker, trying to answer the same questions. I do so with caution. Remember that I do not speak with the voice of a god, a demigod, or even a professional scientist. I humbly address you as a twenty-something undergraduate attending Northern Arizona University. My thoughts and opinions will likely change over the forthcoming years, but change is not a bad thing. Many things change. And when confronting the transitory nature of my seemingly permanent pronouncements on subjects ranging from baseball to pizza to the eternity of the soul, I like to remind myself of the words of a very wise man, Walt Whitman. Among the lines of Song of Myself, this gem can be found: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself” (Whitman, 78). This quote makes me feel comfortable with changing my mind. I even sometimes feel that if I am not retracting my previous statements now and then, if I am not occasionally reversing sentiments I once held dear, I am not growing.

Nevertheless, the question remains: can science provide us with all the answers we want? My answer is that no, scientific inquiry cannot ultimately reveal all we want to know. Science is inherently incapable of answering fundamental questions about many things. In this paper, I will narrow my focus to how science falls short of answering fundamental questions about the creation and the analysis of art.

Let the scientist calculate the brush strokes on Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night; let the most clear-minded and objective of humans quantify the beauty of a great story; these attempts will come to nothing. Notwithstanding all their respectability and thoroughness, all these hypothetical scientific observations and experiments on art will not sufficiently explain what makes great art.

Attempts to understand the mysterious inner workings of art through scientific means have been made. I have heard of (but unfortunately did not find the source) proponents of statistical analysis applying their methods to the theatre. Scientists, using statistical analysis, measured such things as the amount of lines a main character had, the distance on the stage between lovers, distance on the stage between enemies, the volume of speech at different times during a play, and so on. In short, they quantified everything they could think of to quantify. They ended up with not a fool-proof formula for making a good play, but a long list of practically meaningless numbers.

I did find the source, though, for an experiment done by some professors trying to apply scientific principles to the aesthetic experience. V.S. Ramachandran, a professor in the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Programat the University of California, San Diego, and William Hirstein, chair of the philosophy department at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois, endeavored to record measurable activity in the brain while the brain is exposed to art. Their research is very interesting, but in the end it does not provide aspiring artists with a guide on how to make good art, and it does not answer the question, “What makes art pleasurable?” In the conclusion of their findings, they conceded, “much of art is idiosyncratic, ineffable and defies analysis” (Ramachandran and Hirstein, 34).

Since art seems to defy scientific analysis, I am led to say that there is a je ne sais quoi to art, and it is therefore out of the jurisdiction of scientific inquiry. Reflect for a moment on the variety present in art. There are millions of different paintings, plays, books, sculptures and so on. I would think that if art could undergo the analytic rigors of the scientific method and be refined by science’s operations, experts would conclude on one perfect sample from each art medium. (Or perhaps they would conclude on one perfect art medium!) In a way, applying scientific principles to determine the best of something makes sense. Science has been successful in determining the best of some things. For example, science can identify the best brick for a certain purpose. Brick manufacturers have determined what type of brick is the most efficient- what gives the most amount of output for the least amount of input. In other words, it can be determined, by subjecting a brick to tests designed to reveal durability, size, weight, and other such characteristics, what brick is best for the job.

It follows that if theatre was a science, scientists could find the best play- the play that is short enough so as to not be boring, long enough to convince audiences that they got a full night of entertainment and received their money’s worth, possessing just the right amount of suspense, humor and sword-fighting. Once the perfect play was found, that play would be performed over and over again, in every playhouse in every city every night, because it was perfect.

Why hasn’t this perfect play been found? With all our technological advances and with all our highly educated scientists who implement the scientific method, surely the ‘best’ play, novel, poem, could be discovered and reproduced indefinitely. But of course this scenario of finding the perfect play through scientific means is absurd. Playmaking is an art, and not a science.

And I would like to add here that even if science could eventually answer all the questions humans could ever want to know, given enough time and space, that’s still not good enough. We need answers now. We cannot afford to pour grant after grant into universities and wait until the scientists emerge from their labs with the fundamental questions of the universe answered. We have choices to make now.

For instance, a choice we make on a daily basis is what to wear. Every morning I look in my closet and select a shirt to put on. I don’t know how I make this decision; I just make it. If I was pressed about why I wore a particular shirt today, I would most likely say something like, “I don’t know. I just kind of felt like wearing this shirt today.” If pressed further, I would probably say, “Well, I guess the color is nice and I liked the way it fit me. I mean, I guess that other shirt over there is nice, too, and it’s even more comfortable. But, I don’t know. I just felt like wearing this one.” And if further pressed, I would most likely say, “Why do you care so much about my shirt? Let’s go get some breakfast.”

So, not having a scientific explanation concerning why I wear what I wear, I either have to supplant some sort of non-scientific intuitive explanation or be satisfied without an explanation.
Furthermore, not only can I not explain why I wear what I wear, I don’t believe any scientist could accurately explain why I wore a particular shirt either. In fact, I hereby issue a challenge: If any scientist can come into my dormitory, run some tests, meticulously going through each step of the scientific process, and eventually generate a satisfying conclusion, explaining to my and the general scientific community’s satisfaction why I wore a particular shirt, I will forfeit to him or her all the money that I might gain should I win this writing contest. Just contact Telemoonfa at Northern Arizona University to arrange the experiment. I am willing to subject myself to any human experimentation, provided the experiments are not extremely painful or nasty.

In closing, art, as well as wardrobe selection, cannot be explained scientifically. Something as big as art and something as small as picking out a shirt are things that simply cannot become illuminated by the light of a Bunsen burner, and cannot become sufficiently magnified under the lenses of a microscope. And so, to answer some of the questions that will come along as we wonder about the universe and our place in it, let us become broader-minded, more holistic people. Let us not squeeze science out of things that are inherently not under the realm of scientific knowledge. Let us find other academic disciplines, other intuitive, gutsy avenues, or perhaps faith-involved systems for answering those questions that science cannot.




Works Cited (in MLA format)

Ramachandran, V. S.; Hirstein, William. “The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience.” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6.6-7 (1999): 15-51.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.