“While their methods differ radically, artists and physicists share the desire to investigate the ways the interlocking pieces of reality fit together. This is the common ground upon which they meet.”
—Leonard Shlain, Author of Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light”
"Physics is a form of insight and, as such, it's a form of art."
—David Bohm, American Theoretical Physicist
As an artist, I’ve often pondered the proclamation—which has its roots in Greek philosophy—that “Art imitates life.” For me, a fundamental question that underlies acceptance or rejection of this notion is: What did the ancients mean by the word “life”? We can’t know for sure, but, since they were deep thinkers, let’s assume that by “life” they meant “all that is”: things sentient and non-sentient, visible and invisible, known and unknown.
Now, we come to the word “imitates.” The OED defines it as “to take or follow as a model,” and secondarily, “to copy or simulate.” Hmmm. Even if we accept my expansive interpretation of the word “life,” “imitates” seems a rather passive, uninspired verb. To think that we artists have been relegated to the status of mere “imitators” for all these centuries! How would scientists feel if thought leaders were to declare that “Science imitates life”—which is so far from the truth. (I am sure that the rankling provoked by this statement would quickly turn into an audible rumble the likes of which the universe hasn’t heard since the Big Bang—and rightly so.)
While it’s not my intention to disturb the Greek philosophers’ eternal repose in Elysium, I humbly propose an alternative. Here goes: Art and science imagine life. They both reveal and attempt to explain life. I believe that the imagination is the common ground of artists and scientist. We hypothesize, and we explore. We design, compose, and shape. We conceive of new ideas, and we smash outworn ones. We tumble around gleefully in a multidimensional universe where possibilities abound. We may use different tools and go about our journeys in different ways, but, in the end, the imagination is what drives us and makes us who we are. Let’s be inclusive and give all the creative thinkers, makers, and doers the credit they deserve.
Now that artists and scientists have been brought together in this fascinating experiment at UCSC, watch out world! This could become “a thing.” Imagine that!
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