If you look at the path that mankind has passed, we can say that for a representative of homo sapiens there have always been three main tasks: to survive, to learn and to create. If the first question does not arise at all, then the rest require a small reservation.
From the very beginning, in order to survive, a person had to get acquainted with the reality around him, perceive it, study it, expand the boundaries of his own knowledge and comfort. It is quite natural that this required some effort - this is how the first tools of labor and hunting were created, this is how rock paintings appeared, which became the starting point of creativity.
Art and science are still closely linked, representing at the same time completely opposite, but extremely complementary things.
Specifics
Of course, researchers of artistic creativity in all its manifestations and some physicists or programmers can tirelessly argue about the significance of these phenomena in human life. Nevertheless, art and science, paradoxically, are really closely connected, and sometimes they represent a single, almost indivisible whole.
However, ifwe are talking about characteristic features and significant differences, attention should be paid to aspects that are characteristic of only one of the phenomena under consideration. On the one hand, art is a real act of creativity, contact with something higher, unearthly, intangible. No wonder the ancient Greeks, who laid the foundation of modern civilization, considered poetry, music and theater to be one of the most important components of human life. Art and science differ primarily, of course, in the accuracy and clarity of the tasks set, and if in the first case one can speak of almost unlimited freedom, then in the case of science, one often only dreams of this.
Another difference between these components of human life can be considered their purpose. If art is aimed at creation, creation, approaching a deity, an absolute spirit, then the goal of science is most often cognition, analysis, determination of patterns.
There is even an opinion according to which it is study that kills creativity and creations. Any analysis is always a kind of preparation, division into particulars in order to determine the mechanisms of work.
Finally, art and science differ in the degree of accessibility to man. If in the first case we are talking about a phenomenon that is characterized by synesthesia, the highest degree of interaction with the thin strings of the human soul, then the comprehension of science requires a certain level of preparation, knowledge, and special thinking. The acts of creation are available to a greater or lesser extenteveryone, while it is simply impossible to become a space explorer or the creator of a nuclear bomb without many years of training and experiments.
Resemblance
However, are they as different from each other as it seems at first glance? Oddly enough, their similarity lies in the very opposition. Art is, as mentioned earlier, creation, the creation of something new, beautiful from a certain material at the disposal, whether it be plaster, sounds or paints.
But is the creation of something alien to science? Didn't a man fly into space on a ship built thanks to the genius of engineering? Was not the first telescope invented at one time, thanks to which the infinity of stars was opened to the eye? Wasn't the first whey made up of ingredients at one time? It turns out that science is the same act of creation as what we used to call art.
One whole
Finally, we must not forget that in many ways these phenomena, concepts that make up our lives are not just similar, but almost identical. Take, for example, the treatise by N. Boileau - the main manifesto of the era of classicism. On the one hand, this is a classic literary work. On the other hand, a scientific treatise in which the main aesthetic principles of its time are explained, argued and compared.
Another example is the activity of Leonardo da Vinci, who, in addition to paintings, designed aircraft in his drawings, studied human anatomy and physiology. In this caseit is rather difficult to determine whether it was art or scientific activity.
Finally, let's turn to poetry. At first glance, it represents only correctly grouped words, which, thanks to rhyme, turn into a literary text. However, how random is this order? How much effort does an author need to find it? What experience must he acquire for this? It turns out that writing poetry is also a science.
Creators and scientists
So, when we have decided on the specifics of the problem, let's take a closer, more demanding look at it. People of science and art are often the same representatives of the human race. Dante Alighieri, for example, in addition to his obvious belonging to the literary world, can also be ranked among the outstanding historians. In order to realize this, you just need to read his "Divine Comedy".
Lomonosov, in turn, successfully studied chemistry and physics, but at the same time became famous as the author of numerous creations in the ode genre, as well as one of the legislators of Russian classicism.
The examples given are only a minuscule, a small fraction of the number of figures who combined both sides of this coin.
Special sciences
Should we say that not only physics and mathematics keep the world going? There are a huge number of scientific activities that are far from the exact methods of calculation, evaporation or experiments in the fieldplant compatibility.
Extremely related, almost inseparable, can be considered manifestations of art and the humanities. Millions of philologists, culturologists and psychologists have been working for centuries to understand not only artistic creativity itself, but also the world through its prism. By and large, the correct study of a literary work makes it possible to understand not only the features of its organization, but also the time in which it was written, to discover new sides in a person, to add your own, no less significant nuance to the existing picture of the world.
Reasoning and perception
Religion, philosophy, science, art are extremely closely related. To prove this assertion, let us turn our attention to the Middle Ages. It was the church then that was the legislator of everything that happened in the earthly world. She determined the canons of art by limiting the subject, moving to a new level, where the bodily did not matter.
How many heretic philosophers and scientists were then burned at the stake of the Inquisition, how many were simply excommunicated for their own vision of the world or appeal to the form, volume in the image of the saint on the icon!
And at the same time, it was the church and religion that gave the world music, it was philosophy that became the basis for a huge number of novels that are now classics of literature.
Art as divination
Since ancient Greece, there has been a definition of an artist (in the broadest sense of the word) as a medium, a coordinator between heavenly and earthly, divineand human. That is why the goddess of art and science is represented in mythology in nine guises at once. In this case, we are talking, of course, about the muses who give inspiration to artists and researchers, chroniclers and singers. It was thanks to them that, according to myths, a person was able to create beauty and look beyond the horizon, into the incomprehensible and immense.
Thus, the person who created was practically endowed with a kind of gift of clairvoyance. It should be noted that this view is by no means unfounded. Take, for example, the author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. How could he know about technologies that will become a reality in years to come? Or the same Leonardo da Vinci, who predicted the movement of progress even before the rest of humanity thought about it …
Divination and Science
It would be a mistake to assume that only the artist discovers the unknown. In the world of scientific high thought, there are just a huge number of such examples. The most famous of them can be called the periodic table, dreamed by a scientist in the form of a deck of cards.
Or Gauss, who dreamed of a snake biting its own tail. It turns out that science is no less characterized by openness to the unknown, the otherworldly, the subconscious, to what artists intuitively determine with no less accuracy.
Common to all
Whatever you say, but the figures of science and art in their work serve one single, most important goal - to improve the world. Each of them strives to make our lifemore beautiful, simpler, purer, or rather, choosing your own path, different from all others.
