Art v. Science

 

It’s So Easy

People tell me love's for fools.
So, here I go, breaking all the rules.
It seems so easy (Seems so easy, seems so easy)
Oh so doggone easy (Doggone easy, doggone easy)

Breaking rules isn’t easy, but it is necessary.

“Art is in the eye of the beholder”.  “There are rules”.  And this describes the apparent conflict between the arts and the sciences.  Artists are individuals, breakers of rules.  Scientists are also individuals, discoverers of rules.  Those of you who are old enough to remember the classic TV show The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan, playing Number 6, might remember the phrase.  “I am not a number.  I am a free man.”  Those of you who also remember the finale will remember that the elusive Number One was shown also to be Patrick McGoohan.  The finale seemed to imply that I am a free man because I am a number.  The problem is that man is an individual animal, but man is also a group animal, a member of a group.

The phrase is “All for One, and One for All”.  In an ideal world, All, the group, supports the individual, One and the individual, One, supports the group, All.  Or as I learned in Cub Scouts, “The Cub Scout helps the Pack go. The Pack helps the Cub Scout grow”.  A group, such as the United States in its Constitution, “Promote(s) the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”  It does so by promoting those who discover new rules and those who break old rules. To do so you don’t force old rules on individuals because those rules might be wrong or incomplete.  You also don’t prevent individuals from breaking old rules, again because those rules might be wrong or incomplete.  There should be no conflict between arts and sciences. They both have the same end goal, the making of new rules, that improve on, and may replace, old rules.