CONTROVERY OF SUPREMACY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

CONTROVERSY OF SUPREMACYOF ARTS AND SCIENCESDr. Roma Smart JosephTeacher Educator, Lucknow, UP, India

ARTS and SCIENCE both aim at

Christopher Caudwell outlines the differences as

Science as external realityArts as internal one

SCIENCE is the means by which man learns what he can do

ARTS is the means by which he learns what he wants.

In both the camps the practioners are

Great dreamersVisualizers

who are not content with what is going on and hope to change the status quo, but their methods vary considerably.

SCIENCES ARTS The validity of the scientific enterprise lies in showing its divergence from or even discontinuity from its predecessors.There is always a time honoured tradition of folklore , myths and findings whose soundness is taken for granted.

PAUL FEYERBENDS.KUHNEven the very idea of progression in sciences to scholars like P.Feyerbend and S.Kuhn ,a series of jumps in a discontinuous movement from one discursive formation or paradigm to another.

Joseph ConardThe Polish English novelist, Joseph Conard adds his own contribution to the issue by sorting out the subjective characteristics of Arts / Humanities from scientific impersonal ones. He elaborates, the scientist and thinker are concerned with the external aspects of the world , the artist desends within himself to win the truth .

The history of both fields show that humanities always try to keep track of science , making use of its data and strategies.

NietzcheTo Nietzche ,science appears to him as more than an offshoot of humanities spacious field.

D.H.Lawrence s claim in his often quoted statement in the article Why The Novel Matters (1936) that he considers himself better than the scientist because in his view novelist s vision ins comprehensive while the scientists is narrow and fragmentary.

Looking carefully at the terms used in Arts and Literature , we discern , a continuous borrowing from science and its tools.

Literary criticism is crammed with terms whose genesis is Science such as Naturalism, Structuralism, Code, Gestalt etc.

Such borrowings are merely single dimensional ,it is Humanities that borrow while Science always takes initiative and seeks to initiate a line of its own.

In other words Science is self-sufficient and self-generating.

Science ignores and slights the Humanities as merely imaginary constructs that can not hold before verification , but this is not true always as Humanities have their own reasons and justifications.

Because of these differences it is logical to find that Humanities have their own set of conceptions and priorities that have to be observed and taken into consideration.

Sir Charles Percy Snow Sir Charles Percy Snow (1905-1980), he earned his Ph.D. in Physics at the age of 25 and did a great deal of scientific work and research. Snow sees the literary culture ( Humanities ) is not developed enough while the scientific one promises a new golden age,

These above mentioned differences boil down to one basic premise

Scientific Studies and Arts will always be separate and even opposite fields , even though their starting points are similar.

Both are dreams ,visions and concepts which are later materialized.

Each team is quite convinced by its own practices and the constructive role it achieves.

Their purpose is similar, that their potentialities are put at the service of man and sublimating ,removing or at least mitigating the obstacles impeding his progress.

iScience is concerned with the material and mechanical while Arts is concerned with mans inner life, aspirations ,fears and spiritual things. Despite their incongruous lines and enterprises both are indispensible and integral to mans needs of body and soul.

I conclude with Pounds felicitous phrase that The artistic (Humanities) and the Scientific hang together Any conception which does not see them in their interrelation belittles both(1952)

Ezra Pound