The artwork is there, before you, as objective as a rock. — Banno

But what it expresses is not. What it expresses is as much the audience's interpretation as it is the artist's attempt to express something. Hence,

art expresses something about human subjective experience — Noble Dust

Science expresses the human subjective experience. — Banno

Would science describe my experience of stubbing my toe as different than yours? Do the physics of my toe work differently than yours?

Art uses the five senses. — Banno

And science describes how they work, to the best of science's understanding.

But what it expresses is not. What it expresses is as much the audience's interpretation as it is the artist's attempt to express something. — Noble Dust

And that isn't true of F=ma?

I'm of the persuasion that what art is and what it does changes so much over time that it becomes difficult to talk about art in a concrete form. It's easiest to understand "art" through the lens of the current zeitgeist, or one's personal, idiosyncratic lens, if you're out of touch with the zeitgeist. It's compounded by the fact that art from past centuries not only influences artists today, but their perception of what art is, as projected unto the art of the past, influences how they create now. It's a mess.

Which artist is expressing F=ma?

I'm of the persuasion that what art is and what it does changes so much over time that it becomes difficult to talk about art in a concrete form. It's easiest to understand "art" through the lens of the current zeitgeist, or one's personal, idiosyncratic lens, if you're out of touch with the zeitgeist. It's compounded by the fact that art from past centuries not only influences artists today, but their perception of what art is, as projected unto the art of the past, influences how they create now. It's a mess. — Noble Dust

Yep. Well said. The topic is like a blender.

On the slow speed, we think of art and science as two avenues for expressing the zeitgeist, and history stretches out like a number line. One zeit flowing into the next

On the medium speed, we realize that we don't have an outer space vantage point on this. We're always locked in. The number line is part of our zeitgeist.

I don't know what happens on the hi speed. My blender broke.

If our interpretations and understandings are all of equal worth then there is no reason to move from our prejudices and preconceptions. — Banno

Would you apply this same ‘radical relativism’ critique to postmodernists like Nietzsche , Focucault and Derrida?

If
It's a recipe for arch-conservatism. Watch how the rejection of rationality is appropriated by Trumpists and other right extremes. — Banno

I think Trumpists and other right wing extremists are arch-rationalists. That is , they embrace late medieval and early enlightenment forms of rationality.

If Science has a grain; moving in one direction is easier than the other. That might be a result of the expression of science being explicit. — Banno

Dialectical logic? God , the good , and other transcendent ends depend on the stability of the preferred choice. (better and better, more and more , closer and closer , richer and richer). But if preference and desire , in science as in other endeavors, is not directed toward anything but alterity , then the ‘good’ progress loses its stable sense.

Would you apply this same ‘radical relativism’ critique to postmodernists like Nietzsche , Focucault and Derrida? — Joshs

So far as it fits. There are plenty of venture capitalist Nietzscheans.

I think Trumpists and other right wing extremists are arch-rationalists. — Joshs

There are arch-rationalists amongst them, but for the most part I think their choice of philosophies are simply propitious. Anything goes that might serve achieving power.

Dialectical logic? — Joshs

I prefer symbolic logic. The grain of science is in the direction of what works.

Relativity.

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night. — Web Resource

You can't tell where science ends and poetry begins!

Ancient works on proto-science used to be written in verse I believe.

Science may benefit from creative thinking, but that doesn't make it an art form. — Noble Dust

In my agreement:

“Cooking is an art; baking is a science.”

This being a common enough view among commoners (yes, I is a commoner too in this regard). It takes a philosopher that is far removed from the plebs to consider any meaningful difference between the two as gobbledygook. (And yes, one can easily find such via online searches of the proposition given.)

But a commoner such as myself would say that cooking’s success pivots on attention to the qualitative vagaries of gustatory aesthetics in the creation of food, whereas baking’s success pivots on a quantitative, calculating precision for the same end. This despite cooking also making due with precision in certain regards and baking with aesthetics in others.

If art is a science because, for instance, it involves certain ways of knowing - knowledge being what science translates into - and science is an art because, for instance, it involves intuitive faculties - which are requisite in the making of most hypotheses - then all artists are scientists and all scientists artists.

Do the plebian-removed philosophers not see the absurdity in this conclusion?

Wouldn’t it be better to start with the basics and consider why “art” and “science” are not synonyms?

Very often, when a physicist or a mathematician finds a solution to a problem, they describe it as "elegant". And what seems art to someone, may not look like art to someone else, which is common. — Manuel

Not every problem. The poetry of mathematics is in its elegance, a word easily spoken but not as easily defined.

I had in mind Wiles when he managed to give proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, he said that one part that wasn't making sense, but then he remembered something that gave him a solution, and he called it "elegant."

The novelist, who was also a capable mathematician, described some of the higher level stuff in math to be "elegant" too. I can't image it, because I lack that capability to be good at math, never mind these very high level equations.

Still, if they say so, I believe them. But it will be an elegance very few people appreciate and like you say, it would be hard to even explain in what this elegance consists of to people who don't know this kind of math.

The key here is that if you could set out in words what it is that a piece expresses, then there would be no need for the piece. — Banno

:heart: The best answer!

If art is a science because, for instance, it involves certain ways of knowing - knowledge being what science translates into - and science is an art because, for instance, it involves intuitive faculties - which are requisite in the making of most hypotheses - then all artists are scientists and all scientists artists.

Do the plebian-removed philosophers not see the absurdity in this conclusion? — javra

Threads like this wouldn't exist if they did.

Also, I claim Plebeian-Removed as a future band name.

Also, I claim Plebeian-Removed as a future band name — Noble Dust

:grin:

Great Satriani clip, by the way!

Great Satriani clip, by the way! — Prishon

Was it, though?

Was it, though — Noble Dust

Well, I cant see the connection with Chris Martin exactly. I was sitting on the toilet hearing his guitar and it sounded great. Whats the connection with Coldplay?

You seem a bit drunk on having received any responses to your millions of threads. I don't know, maybe just calm down, eat some fruit or something.

Wasnt it you who responded to the question about the meaning of the song viva la vida?

Yes.

Well, maybe the guitar man has a wrong attitude towards people (thinking they all listened to him; it was the first time for me, already proving him wrong). But why he thinks viva la vida is a rip-off? I fail to notice.

Also, I claim Plebeian-Removed as a future band name. — Noble Dust

:yikes: Honored, actually. But now I'm toying around with band name "Plebianesque" myself. Darn, they're getting really hard to find nowadays ... if anyone has tried to come up with a novel band name. :grin:

I'm new to the forum and late to this discussion and this being an internet forum of course I haven't read all the replies :smile: but "art expresses something about human subjective experience" is exactly it. Science is not art by definition, science is constrained, it is the process of making a hypothesis about a phenomenon and then testing that hypothesis, this is the constraint. Art is free to express whatever the artist wants, usually with the intent of expressing to others how the artists feels about some aspect of the human condition. You cannot know how it feels to be me and I cannot know how it feels to be you, what you see, what emotions you experience; art is a way of conveying those feelings, an attempt to bridge the explanatory gap.

In that sense I tend to think of art as the mathematics of emotion. Mathematics is an abstract way of conveying concepts about aspects of the physical world. Similarly art is an abstract way of conveying feelings.

You cannot know how it feels to be me and I cannot know how it feels to be you, what you see, what emotions you experience; art is a way of conveying those feelings, an attempt to bridge the explanatory gap. — TheVeryIdea

Why you cannot? It makes me feel isolated.

For example we learn to associate the sky with the colour blue because people point at the sky and tell us that it is blue. There is no way for me to know what image forms in your brain to represent the colour blue, what you imagine as blue might be different to what I imagine to be blue. We all agree the sky is blue but we are isolated from each other's experience of blue.

It is the same for emotions, seeing someone falling over makes me feel their pain however there is plenty of evidence from the media that a lot of people seem to find it funny that someone fell over. We experience the same world in very different ways and art is one way of one person externalizing their feelings in a way that someone else might comprehend.