3 - Art and science

Summary

Le devoir, pour chacun de nous, est de rechercher les points de liaison [entre la science et l'art] et de les rechercher expérimentalement, car c'est le seul moyen de réussir.

charles mauron

THAT THERE COULD EXIST any grounds at all for a debate on art and science is a modern phenomenon. In the days of Leonardo, the bifurcation did not really exist. Both Mauron and Fry felt the need in their respective fields for what the latter called “systematic study in which scientific methods will be followed wherever possible, where at all events the scientific attitude may be fostered and the sentimental attitude discouraged.” Both Julian Bell and Mauron described Fry as a man who made a synthesis of the attitudes of the artist and the scientist, the very terms of praise Freud used to describe Goethe (1930c; 21: 208 – see Appendix D). Whereas Mauron believed that it was the critic, armed with the experimental method, who was like the scientist, Fry compared the artist to the man of science: Both dealt with relations that were ends in themselves and did not stand for something else. They both constructed self-contained, self-consistent structures that were real in and of themselves.