At one point, I
thought I had figured out the crucial difference between science and the arts:
Science could speak with authority only about things in general; it could not
say anything about a specific individual. Science draws conclusions about the
species acer saccharum; the artist
writes about what a specific sugar maple outside the window means to her as a
window into the connection between humans and trees.
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Sugar Maple planted
in front of our house
in Wellsboro, PA
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One problem with my tidy conclusion
grew out of my work with biologists in our university’s environmental studies
program. When I looked at specific trees with them, they saw so much more than
I did so they could spot variations that I missed. They seemed better equipped
to appreciate individuals than I was.
My brother Tim
is a research scientist and a medical doctor who is senior associate dean for
clinical and translational research at the University at Buffalo Medical
School. So I thought he might have some insight into this paradox; so one day
as we were sitting on the patio during a visit to our younger sister, I summarized
my theory:
Me: Science can speak only in generalities.
Since scientific conclusion must be replicable, it can draw a conclusion about
a species but not about one particular tree.
Tim: Actually, your statement
ignores the importance of the particular in science because the foundation of
science is statements about particular events, each one maintaining its
individual characteristics. I run a series of experiments and then look at the
outcomes of each instance, and the initial conclusion I draw is that in n% of t cases, when we did x, we
obtained a result y in the range between a
and b, or whatever. We make a restricted statement about what we observe in the
sample we analyzed. Any subsequent generalization we draw is valid only in so
far as it connects with what happened in the particular instances in the
experiment we performed. If a generalization is insufficiently connected to
those original specific incidents, then it is not scientifically valid.
Based on what Tim said—that scientists depend on their
ability to observe and distinguish particular individuals to draw their
conclusions—I concluded that I needed to revise my neat distinction. And the
more I thought about his point, the more I began to question, for example, the
role of the specific in literature. After all, Emily Dickinson
sits in her room and writes,
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
Dickinson packs into four brief lines the insight that a
person standing under the sky (contained by it) can also contain the sky in her
mind so that each one contains the other. In addition, both the mind can
contain “You,” which could mean the reader, who is in the poet’s mind as she
writes, or it could be the universal “you,” so that not only does a person’s
mind contain the sky that contains it, but the brain also contains the person
who contains it. Folding these ideas in on themselves should unbalance us a bit
and force us to look with fresh eyes at our place in the world.
Dickinson exploits both her insight into experience and the
elasticity of language to point to a universal experience. She draws a
conclusion based on an insight; when that conclusion is (finally) published, we
get to see whether it resonates with others so that, as in science, the
particular is the foundation for the general. The experiment in this case is
the work of literature, and where v
is value, p is the number of people
who read it, and t is the time over
which people continue to read it, we decide whether something is a great piece
of literature based on v = pt. If the
poem contains an effective combination of particular and general experience,
then the value is high.
For a while I had a shiny new theory about the difference
between science and art, not one based on general vs. particular, but one based
on unambiguous vs. ambiguous or single statements vs. double statements of
truth. The goal of science is a statement so restricted in its meaning and
scope that there is no difference in understanding between speaker and
listener, or that difference approaches zero. Thus, scientists can communicate (ideally)
without ambiguity,
In previous posts I have argued for the complexity and
ambiguity inherent in questions, in metaphors, in creative non-fiction, in art,
in humor, and in the concept of truth, and have asserted that the ability of
artistic and humanistic expression to embody and help us understand the
ambiguity inherent in our worlds is its great strength. So, here is another
tidy distinction.
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But then, of course,
there is quantum mechanics, with its wave-particle duality and the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle. Erwin Schrödinger,
by creating a thought experiment—a metaphor of sorts—tried to point out the
absurdity of positing that the quantum state of an electron should be measured using
probability. In his experiment, a cat in a sealed box has an equal probability
of being alive or dead. Using probability, quantum theory would assert that the
cat was partly alive and partly dead, a patently ridiculous idea. Unfortunately
for Schrödinger, his opponents embraced his experiment as an explanation,
stating that opening the box and observing the state of the cat collapses the
superimposed states and resolves the conflict. Unobserved, however, the cat is
both alive and dead, just as an electron can be in more than one state.
I do not pretend to understand what is going on with quantum
theory yet, but out at the edge, where theoretical physics is operating, we are
dealing with ideas where opposites must be held in tension, the kinds of ideas
that have long been formulated in the language of art and literature. I don’t
know what we will discover when we are finally able to open the quantum
mechanics box and look inside, but right now the unopened box seems to be half
art and half science.
So ultimately, science and art both contain ambiguities and
set side by side are contained in a larger ambiguity, which also includes all
of us.
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