| Is there a relationship between art and science, | | | | apparent irreconcilable differences, there is one |
| particularly physics? If there is, that certainly | | | | feature that solidly marries these two diverse |
| makes them strange bedfellows to say the very | | | | areas. Admittedly both are investigative. But what |
| least. Artists employ images and metaphors; | | | | is it they investigate that gives them common |
| whereas, physicists use numbers and equations. | | | | bond? One word sums it up: reality. |
| Artists engage in the imaginative realm of | | | | Of course their methodologies are radically |
| aesthetics; the scientist spends his time in a world | | | | different, both artist and physicists share a |
| of crisp sharp mathematical relationships, especially | | | | common desire to examine and to investigate |
| between quantifiable properties. Artists create | | | | how the various pieces of reality fit together. It is |
| illusions designed to elicit emotions; physicists deal | | | | this that is the common ground of the artist and |
| with exactitude. They are as different as are | | | | of the physicist; the Acropolis upon which the two |
| night and day. But remember there are shades of | | | | meet. |
| darkness and light flowing into one another when | | | | The scientist strives to break nature into its |
| they are juxtaposed. And that holds true of art | | | | constituents parts, to analyze the relationship of |
| and science. | | | | those parts. The artist, on the other hand, |
| Few, if any, references to art appear in physics | | | | juxtaposes different features of nature, of reality. |
| textbooks, and most certainly art critiques and | | | | He does so to synthesize those features so the |
| historians do not interpret artistic works in terms | | | | whole work is greater than the sum of its |
| of concepts relevant to physics. There is one who | | | | individual parts. The novelist is no different. |
| brings these two divergent fields of endeavor | | | | Noted novelist Vladimir Nabokov put it this way, |
| together. Leonard Shlain in Art & Physics does | | | | "There is no science without fancy and no art |
| just that. Shlain clearly believes that despite their | | | | without fact. |