© 2002 by European Society of Cardiology
Copyright © 2002, European Society of Cardiology
Interactions between science and art
Boerhaaveplein 6, 1091 AS Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Received 8 July 2002; accepted 26 September 2002
In history there are many examples of interaction between science and art, although none of the important persons involved were aware of the similarities in each other's fields. Only in retrospect can we see these similarities very clearly. As an example, let us go back for a minute to the beginning of the 20th century.
Between 1905 and 1914 Picasso developed his vision on Cubism, in 1910 Kandinsky painted the first abstract painting, in 1917 Malevitch completed his suprematist theory, and Mondrian, with a few kindred spirits, founded ‘De Stijl’. All these developments in the arts took place in the period between Einstein's first publication in the ‘Annalen der Physik’ in 1905 and his most important publication in 1916 ‘Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie’. In 1918 Wittgenstein completed his ‘Logische Philosophische Abhandlung’, which later became famous under the title ‘Tractates Logico Philosophicus’
These are only a few of the many possible parallels to show that in twelve and a half years time at the beginning of that century a revolution in both art and science took place in which both art and science, in retrospect, reflect each other. Van Gogh, once the unappreciated wild man, the ultimate idiot of the 19th century, is now admired everywhere by everyone, and for the man in the street Picasso's cubism, Mondrian's style, Einstein's E = MC2, and a lot of Wittgenstein's writing have achieved the status of picture postcards and T-shirts.
Once revolutionary and exclusive, their achievements will irrevocably end as accepted and digested by a society and its collective memory.
Top scientists and really good artists seem to share certain features: a sense of innovation, careful non-prejudiced observation, precision, and a strong and courageous confidence in one's own experience. All of these require a highly sensitive intuition, probably much more than intellect, diligence and knowledge. In art, intuition is seen as a legitimate source, the muse, mysterious but respected, while in science this capacity leads an underground existence, although many scientists testified to the importance of intuition and inspiration in their greatest findings: the sudden revelation and the famous flash.
How do we look at our two different worlds that seem to have so much in common? I don't know about scientists, but the worst question you can ask a serious artist is to see his studio. It is a space full of unanswered questions and any question raised by a visitor makes it more unbearable to be there. You would only invite a really good friend there in order to show your doubts, uncertainties and unfinished mistakes. One day, Chiel asked me to come over to see him in his laboratory. What I remember is a half dark room with tubes and wires hanging everywhere between ceiling and floor, and somewhere in between, caught in a small spotlight, a beating heart! Dr Caligary, Frankenstein and ‘Willie Wortel’ (Gyro Gearloose, the brilliant but absent minded inventor from‘Donald Duck’) in one room. Mighty God, my first thought was, this is much worse than being an artist. What a difference with my own light-flooded silent studio. And what a difference with the well-known poet I once saw in a night train scrawling intensely on the back of his cigar box.
But in the end, we all do very much of the same. All scientists, artists, composers and writers are intensively occupied imagining something that does not yet exist. They find themselves at the borders of areas where up to then hardly anyone found himself, trying to solve problems that are incomprehensible to others, trying to answer questions no one has ever asked. Here, they share a vision on things that are not yet real. This process is very difficult to describe to an outsider. How does one describe the capacity to imagine something as yet unknown as real? To see logical connections in illogical arrangements? A long time ago, the Dutch painter Karel Appel—trying to explain this state of mind, much to the amusement of everyone, said: "I just mess around" ("Ik rotzooi maar wat aan"). Although at that time no one understood the profoundness of these words, I still find them, to this day, one of the best-chosen descriptions of that spiritual state of mind at the heart of the creative process.
Research becomes in fact nothing else than a sublimation of one's own setbacks, a process in which you take advantage of mistakes and turn them into adventurous inventions. Talent then is that special intuition to rearrange illogical and non-rational thoughts and ideas into one's imagination in such a way that useful results emerge that no one ever came across before. To picture oneself in a non-existing world, and to attach consequences to it as if it were real, that is a characteristic feature of a creative mind. After intuition initially has been nourished by knowledge, during the creative process, the mind becomes the servant of the intuition. And intuition becomes a reliable compass. What is the meaning of words such as ‘to know’ or ‘to understand’? To understand everything means to know nothing. To be able to accept that opens up a world with many unexpected views. To be accessible to an almost self-created accident, and then to grab the chance to make all sorts of impossible connections which no one saw before. "Ik rotzooi maar wat aan" (I just mess around). What else can you say about a truth that is only yours in that very instance, a conviction that you cannot share with anybody anyway? What joy and amazement such a moment can bring. Unfortunately, this happiness never lasts very long. Any solution immediately raises new questions. Where the scientist unravels reality, the artist adds to it, but both live with the ever pressing question: "Is there more than I found"? The always uneasy dissatisfaction in the background about the imperfections of the find, and with that notion, the embarrassment with any success, which never was the purpose to begin with. And what is success? That long road for the scientist up to publication in an important professional Journal and acknowledgement by other specialists that this publication is valuable? Science requires proof. Science asks for objective precision. But by creating a work, the artist has to be uncompromisingly subjective. Where science asks for proof, art asks for interpretation. The work of art has to be acknowledged by museums, orchestras, publishers and specialists, who in their turn are still far away from critics, professional Journals, not to speak of the public at large. Even when the inventions and discoveries are a success in both arts and science, sooner or later they will end up in the hands of people whose single goal seems to be to reduce everything to craftmanship and knowledge. Crafts, skills and knowledge are too often seen as the real art and the real science. Anyone who has gone through the painful process of unlearning everything that was achieved can appreciate this.
It is a persisting misunderstanding that the motives for art are found in esthetics, or in the making of beautiful things. No, they lie exactly there where they lie for science, namely: to be astonished and to discover. Skills and knowledge are just side products extracted from conclusions that were distilled from new findings.
For artists and scientists the problem is not so much what to do, but how to do it. But the outsider only wants to know: "what is the practical utility", "what is it"?
A simple example. In the 16th and 17th century, paintings depicting a ‘little landscape’, ‘ a tree near a bridge’ were produced by the thousands. But this simple theme becomes, in the hands of Rembrandt, Ruysdael or Van Goyen, cosmos and fireworks, paintings with an aura that will tolerate nothing else in their surroundings. The spectator loses himself in WHAT he sees. He sees only the tree, the bridge, the inscrutable magnificence, but all this only veils the secret of how it was made. The spectator sees precision and vision as an accomplished fact, ‘a beautiful painting’, but he cannot grasp the idea that a beautiful painting is nothing less than the formulation of an enigma. Take a line from a poem by Borges ‘The green silence of the fields’ and compare it to ‘The silence of the green fields’. Almost no one would hesitate to consider the second formulation as the correct paraphrase of the first, which is taken as a poetic ‘distortion’ of what things really are. But without that distortion there would be no poetry. It is all about HOW to say it. Not WHAT something represents, but HOW it is represented that brings you to the source of that ultimate amazement when something is done for the first time, in other words, to a true creation.
After many similarities and so much interaction, a few words about differences. A major difference in the way problems are solved in science and in the arts is that in science we look for generalisation, while in art there are only ad hoc solutions. That is exactly why art is not a craft. There are no general ‘formulae’ for poetic or artistic quality. This might seem frustrating from a scientific point of view, but single solutions, such as a single poem or painting, may last for centuries. Greek sculptures, Gregorian songs, or Homer's poetic adventures outlasted many scientific theories of their contemporaries. The ad hoc quality of art reflects the ad hoc ever-changing nature of life, and the more its impermanence and unreachable nature is elucidated, the more lasting is the work of art. Paradox is at the core of art. It cannot remedy the contradictions in our lives, but might show us how to live with them. For those who have more questions now than before, a last word from Wittgenstein from his ‘Vermischte Bemerkungen’, just to comfort you: "Nur wenn man noch viel verrückter denkt als die Philosophen kan man ihre Problemen lösen".
This article is based on a lecture held during a symposium on ‘Art and Science’, held in Amsterdam on 12 June 2002 on the occasion of the retirement of Michiel J. Janse as Professor of Experimental Cardiology, organised by Michael R. Rosen, Ruben Coronel, Arthur A.M. Wilde and Marijke Kraayenhof.
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