Sergio de Régules
Dirección General de Divulgación de la Ciencia
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
An exhibition created in 2005 by the Universum science museum (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) and the Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts explores the deeper connection between art and science. It shows how both originate in the human brain and how they are informed by the brain’s peculiarities. One section explores how our brains make meaning out of patterns and structure. Another suggests that theory-building in science is guided by aesthetic criteria such as parsimony and unity in diversity. The exhibit as a whole suggests that art and science are the same search for structure, a search spurred by the pleasure of creation.
Key words: art, science, museums
Mysterious as creativity in the arts and in science may sometimes seem, its
roots lie ultimately in the physiology of the human brain. As argued in
The exhibition
The exhibition opens with a section on the senses as the “feelers” whereby the brain takes in the outside world. By means of tactile enigmas, optical illusions, and musical stimulations, this section suggests that perception is a collaborative effort between the sense organs and the brain.
The second section presents the brain as an interpreter (Gazzaniga (2002)). In order to make sense of the myriad stimuli it must deal with, the brain has evolved to excel in a number of tasks, such as connecting the dots (finding patterns) and reading between the lines (completing missing information –or even making it up!). These abilities are important in both science and the arts. In science they are an essential part of theory-building. In the arts, cinema and good writing, for example, convey meaning without tiresome explanations by letting the public connect dots and read between lines.
But why did we evolve these capabilities? The answer can be stated in the form of a dictum for fitness in the environment of our ancestors: predict or perish. A knack for predicting the behavior of nature, or of your neighbors, was adaptive in the Paleolithic environment where the brain evolved, as indeed it still is.
Pinker (2002) writes: “Organisms get pleasure from things that promoted the fitness of their ancestors” (p. 405). We suggest that the joys of art and science are associated with the pleasure we get when using our brains to seek or create symmetry, order, harmony, structure; in a nutshell, the pleasure of finding form (science) and creating form (art).
The main section of the exhibit explores some of Miller’s “ideas developed in common by artists and scientists.” The Mexican playwright Bertha Hiriart, in Castro (2003), describes the art of drama as a search for accuracy, order, and beauty. As it turns out, that is not a bad description of science. There are other convergences. Science and the arts share a passion for unity in diversity and for hidden meanings. They also share the need for imagination and acute observation. These convergences are illustrated by examples from both disciplines –the hidden unity of the mathematical curves known as conic sections (which are all derived from a cone intersected by a plane with different orientations), and in art, the hidden meanings and symmetries of a painting by Salvador Dalí.
Outlook
From the outset it was decided that the exhibition would not be explicative, but only suggestive, of these ideas. Text was to be kept at a minimum in accordance with the basic tenet that reading between the lines, or supplying missing information from clues, is one of the main adaptive abilities of the human brain and one on which art and science rely heavily. The exhibition does not impose a message on visitors. It proposes stimuli and experiences that point in the general direction of a new assessment of the link between art and science.
One message we do expect our visitors to take away with them is that science and the arts are not the antagonists that common belief makes them out to be. This may help pave the way to a better understanding and appreciation of science as an important part of culture.
Wilson, E. O. (1999). Consilience. New York: Vintage.
Pinker, S. (1999). How the Mind Works. New York: Norton.
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking Penguin.
Miller, A. (2001). Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty that causes Havoc. New York: Basic Books.
Gazzaniga, M. (2002). The Split Brain Revisited. Scientific American Special Edition, 12 (1), 27-31.
Castro, R. (comp.) (2003). Las otras lecturas. México: Paidós.
A version
of this article was presented at the PCST – 8 Conference,