As expressed in her book The Science and Art of Being Human, Margaret’s sense of the essential unity of science, religion and art is not dissimilar to mine as expressed in my STAR of truth acronym where all three combine to create the most effective path we can create to bring us closer to the truth than we would otherwise get.
Her approach is to broaden the definitions of art and science. She quotes Ludwig Tuman as saying:[1] “From this point of view, we can think of any organised body of knowledge as ‘a science’, and any skill that can be taught as ‘an art’.”
This is not a widely held view of the matter:[2] ‘The arts are [now] commonly understood as coming under the heading of the visual arts, the performing arts and the written arts.’ She adds that this was not always the case:[3]
Language understanding over time demonstrates that in the 1400s the words art and science had a similar meaning. Both were understood as involving knowledge and skills.
We’re all artists
She examines the discriminations which currently operate. For example:[4]
The arts and artists are set apart from the ordinary person.… In education, for example, the focus is on ‘academic’ achievement, so the arts, seen as vocational, are not equally valued.… Sciences are indispensable while the arts are dispensable.
Sher bases her case against this on the root meaning of the word ‘artist’:[5]
The word artist means a person with a skill, so are we saying that only those who practice a visual, performance or written arts have ‘skills’? Surely not. We all have skills, a huge variety and a vast array of areas of learning. Skill is also defined as expertise.… Surely this includes us all.
Use of our skillset is woven into the fabric of our entire life:[6]
We use our skills throughout our lives, to create objects and experiences for either the pure joy of creating, or for monetary benefit, or for the benefit of the world we live in.
The Shrine of the Báb, Haifa
She draws on the Writings of the Báb to emphasise just how important such skills can be:[7]
‘For everything within its own limits desires to attain to the highest point of its limits. And if a person has the ability to do this for it but does not, then he will be held responsible by it.… Every everyone should carry out these obligations according to their ability.’
So basically these broader definitions of art and science mean that in effect we’re all artists:[8] ‘From this alternative perspective a person with skills and capacity is an artist ; every single person is applying their skills in their life circumstances.’
Applying what we know
There is an important distinction to be made between science and art however:[9]
[Hooper Dunbar] states that the compilation on science and art he refers to indicates that ‘Science is knowledge and art is the application of knowledge or the application of science.’
In a sense, if it is not applied in some way, science would be useless:[10]
Science (knowledge) is a universal resource which we acquire, but without the perfection of art (skills) to apply it in practice, it serves no real purpose.
My own career trajectory may be of some relevance here. When I began to study psychology I did so because it would help me in my work with people struggling with mental health problems. There came a point when I could, after completing my BSc with flying colours, have perhaps opted for an academic psychology post, but I never seriously considered that a valid choice. Applied psychology in a clinical context was what attracted me the most, was what felt like my vocation. I decided not to pursue academic psychology and its related research, but to use my understanding of the research to enhance my therapeutic practice of clinical psychology. Seems like I was always drawn more to an art than a science!
She brings others in to corroborate her sense of the importance of applying what we know:[11]
Richard J. Bernstein, in his book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, discusses the meaning of knowledge, stating that ‘Knowledge is not conceived as an exact description of reality, but involves insight into reality that can guide effective practice.’
She goes onto to explain, with the help of others, how simplifying the complex reality of this can have damaging consequences:[12]
It appears then that, according to Robinson and Gardner, human capacity is complex and cannot be explained by simple and now outdated terms such as academic/non-academic, intelligent/unintelligent. However the education ‘systems’, designed for the convenience of control and management, have not yet recognised the vast potential of every individual to contribute, in multiple ways, to the well-being of the world and its peoples. Robinson suggests that we need to rethink:
… Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth for a particular commodity and for the future, it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children.
I’m the one on the left running to play football at the grammar school
Forging Cogs
I resonate strongly to this critique having felt, ever since my decade as a teacher, that it is all too easy to slip into seeing education as forging cogs for the wheels of commerce rather than drawing out our innate capacities for the greater good. The simplest example of that I can remember is when I was marking some fourth year exam papers.
I had been recruited in the 60s to a grammar school by the then Head of English, who appeared at the door of my pokey bedsit near Bush Hill Park dressed in an RAF uniform (he also ran the cadets’ Air Training Corps) and parading a bushy white moustache that matched it well.
‘D’you need a job?’ he asked crisply, after explaining who he was and what he wanted. As I was working in a cemetery at the time for very little money, it was a no brainer. Uniform or no uniform, this seemed better than working for a pittance among gravestones.
I got a strong sense of what was in store when I used the same classroom immediately after his lesson in the first week I was there. The entire blackboard was covered in clause analysis examples which displayed huge numbers of every kind of subordinate clause in different coloured chalk – red for adverbial, green for adjectival and blue for noun clauses. (How many people reading this post can honestly say they have an intense desire to know more about this? For those few who do, please see link.) I began to realise that death comes in many disguises.
The final straw came three years later when I was marking the mid-year English essay exam (that’s an adverbial clause, by the way!). There were two essays that became the litmus paper that detected the exact extent of my discontent.
One was written by the boy with the neatly parted hair and the smart blazer with his hand in the air to every question, who always came top. It was exactly the right number of words on two sides of paper, the handwriting was beautifully legible and the content completely predictable. I gave it 11 out of 20.
The other essay was written by the classroom rebel, forever slouching in his seat with an unkempt shock of hair, crumpled uniform and a scowl on his face. The essay covered eight sheets in straggling barely legible script and was so utterly original and compelling that by the time I finished reading it I didn’t even notice the scrawl it was written in. I gave it 19 out of 20: I took one mark off for the poor handwriting.
Steeped as I was in Dylan’s music and only a year away from enthusiastically joining in the widespread spirit of protest in 1968, I realise now I was a touch biased, but what followed was not a balanced and correct response, replacing as it did a mild injustice with a greater one.
I think the parents of the first boy must have appealed against my mark. The Head of English insisted on re-marking all the essays but the only marks I remember his changing were for these two essays. He gave the first boy full marks and failed the second one because of his poor handwriting. This was one of the main reasons I left the school at the end of that year and moved to a college of further education (and that was not without its challenges, of course). It is interesting how, after all these years, this incident has stayed with me so vividly.
How far does creativity extend?
Margaret Appa expands the important role of creativity even further:[13]
[Robinson’s report states] . . creativity is not unique to the arts. It is equally fundamental to advances in the sciences, mathematics, technology, in politics, business and in all areas of everyday life.
In the process we expand our understanding of reality:[14]
Sir Harry Kroto responded : ‘… In all creative processes we are pushing the boundaries of what we know now, to explore new possibilities…’
And it here she explicitly lands on almost exactly the same page as I feel I am on:[15]
Howard Gardner, in thinking about education in this globalised world,… also asserts [in his book Five Minds for the Future], that too often we think of science as the prototype of all knowledge, rather than one powerful way of knowing that needs to be complemented by artistic and humanistic and perhaps also spiritual stances.
I’m very much in synch with another of her conclusions:[16]
As soon as the concept of the integration and connectedness of science and art is accepted, we can approach everything we do in a more holistic manner.
This resonates with Saiedi’s explanation of the importance of the heart, as the Báb has explored it, in helping us to reach higher levels of understanding:[17]
. . . by attaining the higher perspective of the heart, one can transcend the oppositions of the limited station of intellect and arrive at a more comprehensive, holistic perspective.
He goes on to explain the potential implications of this for humanity as a whole:[18]
Humanity has now arrived at the beginning of a new age: human spiritual culture has evolved from the stage of the “body” through that of the “soul,” to that of “intellect,” and has arrived at the stage of the “heart.”
I am also on the same page as Margaret Appa about our need to take as much care cultivating our inscape as our landscape:[19]
One’s inner spiritual life requires the same commitment as one’s outer creative life if progress is to be sustained over a lifetime; [the conscientiousness required for skilled craftsmanship] needs to be cultivated.
And then almost my favourite word comes in:[20] ‘The source of crafts, sciences and arts is the power of reflection.’[21] I think I’ve said more than enough about that already on this blog so I’ll stay schtum this time.
Towards the end of her book, she homes in on what she feels is a crucial benefit of her approach:[22]
. . . It would take several years to arrive at a point where I had the confidence to share my research, which appears to demonstrate that when these narrow interpretations and understandings are broadened and science is understood to be about the ‘accumulation of knowledge’ and art is the ‘skilled application of knowledge’, either in the sense of an object or an experience, then the opportunities to include everyone in the process of generating and applying knowledge seems logical.
Without this breadth of definition, a creative application of what we know becomes problematic:[23]
. . . art is the application of science, but only if the understanding of both science and art is broad and inclusive, where science is seen as any system of knowledge and art any form of practice that enables that system of knowledge to be applied in practice.
It’s time at last to move on in the next post to a far more challenging area of exploration. I want to look at the work of a poet, R. S. Thomas, who seems to be attempting to draw on art, spirituality and to a lesser degree science, in order to explore his consciousness and get closer to the truth.
References
[1]. The Science and Art of Being Human – page 6.
[2]. Op. cit. – page 7.
[3]. Op. cit. – page 21.
[4]. Op. cit. – page 9.
[5]. Op. cit. – page 10.
[6]. Op. cit. – page 11.
[7]. Op. cit. – page 15.
[8]. Op. cit. – page 19.
[9]. Op. cit. – page 22.
[10]. Op. cit. – page 25.
[11]. Op. cit. – page 27.
[12]. Op. cit. – page 36.
[13]. Op. cit. – pages 36-37.
[14]. Op. cit. – page 41.
[15]. Op. cit. – page 49.
[16]. Op. cit. – page 83.
[17]. Gate of the Heart – page 180.
[18]. Op. cit. – page 227.
[19]. The Science and Art of Being Human – page 86.
[20]. Op. cit. – page 88.
[21]. Tablets of Bahá-u-lláh – page 72.
[22]. The Science and Art of Being Human – page 120.
[23]. Op .cit. – page 122.
Everybody Means Something 