C. L. Harness

Charles L. Harness was an American patent lawyer who wrote some influential and enduring science fiction works. “The Rose” arguably his best known was published in the UK in 1953. In the book, he pitted the arts against the sciences. The protagonists were a husband and a wife, Martha and Ruy Jacques.

Martha the Scientist declaimed:

Ruy, the Renaissance man, pontificated:

Harness took extreme positions to illustrate the divide. Science tries to understand the beauty of poetry by analyzing and dissecting down to its constituent atoms, maybe missing the big picture. Science relentlessly dissects in order to build a new picture of understanding. Artists describe the eternal truths of the world by combining ideas to create a new vision.

A. Huxley

Huxley identified a curious paradox. That the more science advanced, the more it studied objects not directly available to the five senses, the more it became metaphorical and abstract. The electron and the photon, the "things" of quantum mechanics, cannot be apprised by our senses — yet they are functional and reproducible. He was wryly observing that at the end of the day both Science and Arts deal with the mystery of the abstract world. One could express this differently. That both artist and scientist use their imagination in order to create and to discover. Imagination is the essence of abstract thought.

Maybe Science and Art are more similar than either admits to.

Huxley made another interesting observation. We have emotional experiences that are private but others that are more public. Science deals with our shared public experiences — plagues, architecture, and bushfires; while art delves into private emotions such as sadness and relationships (Huxley, Reference Huxley1963, pp. 4 and 5).

Huxley reminded us that “Blake (18th century) and Keats (19th century) … detested Sir Isaac Newton (17th century) because he had cut the old connections between the stars and the heavenly host … and so had de-poetized the world and robbed it of meaning.” (Huxley, Reference Huxley1963, p. 111). Their critique of Newton is not strictly true. They were heuristically making the point that the power of science should not leave behind the wonder of nature. An amaryllis flower can be described and defined by its DNA. However, its glorious red color, and pistil provocatively displayed in front of the stamens, dancing in the breeze, cannot be described scientifically. It is not a matter of one precluding the other. The challenge is to perceive both, as one and fully complementary.

Concatenations

Science and its laws; the arts and their idiosyncrasies: both are Truths. One without the other is like the body without the soul; like the mind without the brain. At first glance, we might think the arts seek meaning and science provides explanations. However, both approaches — science and art — position ourselves in the universe and allow for meaning-making.

Einstein said it clearly: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.” (Einstein, Reference Einstein2021).

Rene Descartes (1595–1650) was the first to address the mind–body problem in its modern formulation. Descartes identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from the brain (physical). Hence two separate entities, Cartesian Duality.

Many modern philosophers, however, consider the mind to be a natural consequence of the brain and disclaim dualism. Others note that the nature of consciousness makes it unlikely that it, consciousness, is simply a product of the brain. (Chalmers, Reference Chalmers2010).

Breitbart wrote about God and science: "I am a scientist and a palliative care physician who is in awe of the material world but I am also a human being who will continue to wonder and explore what lies within, without and beyond." (Breitbart, Reference Breitbart2005).