What's More Important: Art or Science?

[gremcint]

Without science there would be a lot less art, any number of instruments, whether it was acoustical engineering or electronics. New paints, new brushes, new canvasses.

Without science there would still be art, but it would not be anywhere near the level we have today.

[Kalli]

Completely subjective question.

If you meant to ask "what's more important to YOU", sure, good thread. (My answer is Art, btw.)

If you are asking what is more important to humanity, there is no absolute answer.

[AdminAssistant]

Not to mention the number of artists who have made significant contributions to other fields - Goethe being the most prominent example.

Honestly, I blame the postmodern art movement for these negative attitudes. I look at some of these pieces and just wonder... Examples - Basquiat, John Cage, The Living Theatre (headed by Julian Beck and Judith Malina)...honestly, I think some of these people were just trying to be 'cool' and 'edgy' for the sake of being different and they purposefully alienated their audience. I do think art should challenge people, but I don't go for the stuff that is purposefully offensive for the sake of stirring up controversy.

[Savannah]

Neither.

Science works more on the physical side, while art works more on the emotional side. Both are necessary. Boozy puts it better than I do.

(I've always seen history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and criminology listed as social sciences. While I can't speak for the other disciplines, psychology strives to be a science.)

[Flyndaran]

It seems that people are lumping every single human endeavor into two categories and then asking which is more important.

I call it a useless question. It's like asking which half of your body is more important, your right or your left.

I'm left handed, but I kind of need my liver too.

[Gravekeeper]

I'm a writer, artist and designer and I would still say science.

My art isn't much good if no one is alive to enjoy it and there is no medium by which to spread it. I won't debate which is more important to me personally, as that wasn't really the question.

[lordlundar]

So you lump every form of entertainment as art? That seems so inclusive as to be nonsense.

And yet it's accurate. Art is not just painting a picture or carving a statue. The purpose of art is to express and invoke emotional response, whether positive and/or negative. To that end, all forms of entertainment, regardless of the field, is art.

Now whether it's GOOD art is debatable, but it is art nonetheless.

No as for which is more important, I say neither is more important than the other, and nor are they mutually exclusive. A lot of the scientific breakthroughs we have we owe to people thinking creatively which stems from the arts, and a number of forms of art pieces stem from a scientific approach. (look at picture of a fractal algorithm for example)

[lovlybones]

I think art and science can be seen as the same thing. In some forms art is medicine for people in therapies and such. and science makes medicine(real perscriptions) to help other people with what they have. some people can never be able to see the inside of a live human body. I think that image is art, even though its included in science. why choose one over the other when you can have both work together? without pictures in science books you might have no idea what your doing.

there are also forms of science in art where you have to wait for the chemicals to do what they do for the end product to be the way you want. science is problem solving and so is art. I think the only difference is that sometimes art is about doing something that hasn't been done before when science is trying to prove so many things that have been done already.

[radiocerk]

While science may be more important now, in our day to day lives, I believe that if it weren't for art we would have never gotten to this point.

Science was, before it was quite so, for lack of better term, 'scientific', the domain of the dreamers, philosophers, the people who imagined a different world. Those imaginings and dreams led others to attempt to manufacture them. But if no one had ever written stories, or painted pictures of the concept, who would have bothered wanting to go to the moon?

Science is, in an odd way, very closely related to art. You can't research what you can't imagine.

[Flyndaran]

While science may be more important now, in our day to day lives, I believe that if it weren't for art we would have never gotten to this point.

Science was, before it was quite so, for lack of better term, 'scientific', the domain of the dreamers, philosophers, the people who imagined a different world. Those imaginings and dreams led others to attempt to manufacture them. But if no one had ever written stories, or painted pictures of the concept, who would have bothered wanting to go to the moon?

Science is, in an odd way, very closely related to art. You can't research what you can't imagine.

I see science in almost the exact opposite way. In a way it was a lack of imagination that led to discoveries. I don't know what's over there, so I'll go look leads to new knowledge, not I can imagine what's over there, so I don't need to look.

[BroomJockey]

In a way it was a lack of imagination that led to discoveries.

A guy on LSD conceptualized the form of DNA. An excellent scientist has a nearly intuitive grasp on concepts and being able to link them in uncommon ways to come up with new ideas. Useful and amazing discoveries are often nearly overlooked because some straight-laced twit didn't have the imagination to see what they could lead to. Science isn't about a lack of imagination. If it was, we'd still be in the Dark Ages, because people wouldn't be able to imagine things working any differently than "they just work." Science is all about saying "What if?"

[Flyndaran]

Imagination is a useful tool, but not the goal in itself. I was just trying to suggest a different way of looking at things.

[BroomJockey]

I was just trying to suggest a different way of looking at things.

And I was saying your suggestion was wrong. Or at least incredibly limited in scope and application.

[Flyndaran]

And I was saying your suggestion was wrong. Or at least incredibly limited in scope and application.

And I think many arguments in this thread have been overly broad in scope and application. To each their own.

[LadyMage]

I kind of agree that art and science can be the same thing myself, like cooking is considered an art, but science has its hand in it too.

Both need each other,, there is no getting around that, one always helps the other

drawings of models for scientists to show what they know about the human body to others

computers becoming canvases for artists drawing something

and any form of human expression, be it cake, game, book, poem, song, painting, statue, dirty table (yes there was an artist that passed off a dirty table as art, until the cleanup crew thought it was real and cleaned it, as my husband tells me anyways), formula, invention, building, program are all some form of art, be it good or bad, useful or not

so I say they are important, which you prefer is the question, me I like art, my husband likes science, but then I be a wannabe writer and he be a chemist so yeah bias central