
Ask HN: Has art positively impacted your scientific profession? - unnawut
I have read some discussions that seem like scientific people, or those whose professions are more inclined towards logical skills, may not appreciate art as much as other. Some are to the level of dismissing art as useless to human civilization altogether. Is art really that dismissal?<p>Has art impacted your scientific side of your profession in a positive way?
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jamessb
There are certianly many technical people who are very appreciative of the
arts.

Carl Djerassi was a novelist and playwright as well as a very distinguished
chemist [1], Stuart Firestein was a theatre director before beginning his
career in science [2], and Pietr Hein [3] is famous for his short poems as
well as his mathematical pursuits. There are also a large number of medical
doctors who are also authors.

There's also a short science fiction story at the end of each issue of Nature
[4].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Djerassi#Career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Djerassi#Career)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Firestein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Firestein)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Hein_(scientist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Hein_\(scientist\))

[4]:
[http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/futures/index.html](http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/futures/index.html)

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veddox
I'm not sure I agree with you. In fact, a scientist's analytical thinking may
be of great help in understanding the more complex art forms and thus engender
a deeper appreciation of said art. Also, scientists are highly educated people
and as such often have a strong background in the arts and humanities too.
Specifically the "classical arts" tend to be the purview of the upper middle
class that most scientists belong to.

(At least that is the situation here in Germany, where our Humboldtian
tradition of education places a premium on a well-rounded schooling. Amongst
my fellow students - biologists, physicists and such - it is not abnormal to
discuss literature or music or philosophy. It is almost expected of an
educated person that he or she be able to talk about such topics.)

Speaking personally, I have to say that I find it refreshing and indeed almost
necessary to engage in "right-brain activities" every now and then. Few people
are entirely logical in their thinking - and art is a wonderful outlet for the
emotional side of our being.

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mbrock
I think of art like Kafka thought about literature:

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the
book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we
reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would
be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us
happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books
that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of
someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far
from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea
within us. That is my belief.”

It doesn't seem likely that art is useful in my profession, but is that what
it's for?

~~~
veddox
An impressive quote, but I cannot agree with it fully. Of course it is a very
important function of art to shake us up and get us to see the world in a
different light. No doubt about that.

But to reduce it to merely this is to ignore what makes art what it is. It
ignores the aesthetics, the concept of beauty. The idea that something can
have value without having explicit content.

Aesthetics make art a potent tool for transmitting ideas. We are more likely
to be influenced by something we sensually enjoy. But it is the aesthetics
that make something art, and not the idea. Art can exist without the latter,
but not without the former. And that is valid too. Because sometimes, what we
really need in this world is just a little bit of beauty.

~~~
mbrock
Aesthetics is an interesting concept. Romantics thought the sublime was the
highest aesthetic and the sublime is terrifying. Bach is kind of terrifying
too. Even the works that aren't praising Jesus, the God who bled to death from
being murdered by humans.

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indescions_2017
See this fantastic recent YC podcast with former Artforum EIC Michelle Kuo.
Where she talks at length about E.A.T. And collabs between Billy Klüver,
Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Feynman, and Bell Labs engineers curious about
experimenting with LSD!

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and-
technolog...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and-technology-
with-artforum-editor-michelle-kuo/)

And for inspiration:

Billy Klüver: Motion of the Electron

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3wnOGPnGs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3wnOGPnGs)

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framebit
I transitioned from filmmaking to software engineering (long story) and now
paint very seriously in my free time. I think of myself as an artist with a
day job. When I come home, I crave the release of my easel. My partner has
noticed that when I'm engaged with my art, I'm more relaxed and just "more of
a person."

My background in art and storytelling, and particularly in film editing,
informs my day job in so many weird ways. Although I feel like an outsider and
a total weirdo sometimes in the tech world, I have an intuition and attention
to people that many of my colleagues don't have or don't have as keenly. I can
tell the story of a project in a really compelling way. I can fit the pieces
of a project together in the same way that I can fit the individual shots of a
scene together.

On the flip side, computer science has helped me approach my art in a more
disciplined manner. It's also opened up a world of digital art to me in a way
that would have been unapproachable before I really knew stuff about
computers.

I firmly believe that deep study in one concentrated area absolutely informs
other areas. Mine happen to be art and computer science, but this could be
language and chemistry or philosophy and physics or any number of
combinations. I think there's something to the Socratic notion of true forms,
and I think immersion in any particular discipline gives you different
directions of insight to these forms. Or to God, if you want to give a
theological twist to it.

Science and (good) art are both getting at the same thing: truth. They are two
different sides of the human experience, pointing at the same thing. I would
dare to say that one cannot be a well-rounded person without at least some
appreciation or mild interest in the other.

T.S. Elliot was a banker when he started publishing poetry. His wealthy
society friends offered to pay him the same salary to write full time, and he
turned them down. There have been many other writers and artists who found the
discipline, financial security, and routine of their day job necessary to
foster their artistic output. I do dream about being able to paint full time,
but I wonder if I would be as productive in my art without the daily exercise
of, for lack of a better term, my left brain.

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cju_
Hacker&Painter (Paul Graham) might interest you, he draws a large parallel
between art and computer science (along many others topics).

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johnpython
I don't appreciate or value art at all.

