A small collection of pieces created by a graduate medical student, where I aim to explore science using embroidery and other mediums.
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Is Science Art?
Science and art are both ways in which humans attempt to process, understand and then describe the world we are surrounded by.
Science has particular methods: it is fundamentally objective, controlled, empirical. Similarly, art has particular methods: there is an emphasis on subjectivity and exploration, but there is also an element of regulation regarding how art is created... e.g. what type of needle to use to embroider or how to prime a canvas.
The procedures and techniques adopted by scientists and artists may be very different. Ultimately, however, they both have a common aim. Artists and scientists both want to 1) make sense of the vastness around them in new ways, and 2) present and communicate it to others through their own vision.
So does this common aim mean that science is the same as art? Not necessarily. Just because they both seek the same thing, it does not mean they are equal. Science seeks truth and isn't concerned about aesthetics. It seeks knowledge, whether this is pretty or not. It does not aim to be an art, to be pleasing to the eye or to make hearts sing. But despite this, science inevitably delivers such beauty.
You may look down the eyepiece of a microscope and consider the abstract nature of stained cells to be beautiful. You may learn about the structure of DNA, and how it is packaged into beads then fibres then looped into a chromosome, matched with a homologue and residing in a karyotype, and you may find this beautiful. You may explore the pathology of heart disease, and how our own organs try to compensate for dysfunctions of our body... and you may find this beautiful.
So perhaps science doesn't mean to be artistic, aesthetic or appealing, but it still is.
Science and art are both ways in which humans attempt to process, understand and then describe the world we are surrounded by.
Science has particular methods: it is fundamentally objective, controlled, empirical. Similarly, art has particular methods: there is an emphasis on subjectivity and exploration, but there is also an element of regulation regarding how art is created... e.g. what type of needle to use to embroider or how to prime a canvas.
The procedures and techniques adopted by scientists and artists may be very different. Ultimately, however, they both have a common aim. Artists and scientists both want to 1) make sense of the vastness around them in new ways, and 2) present and communicate it to others through their own vision.
So does this common aim mean that science is the same as art? Not necessarily. Just because they both seek the same thing, it does not mean they are equal. Science seeks truth and isn't concerned about aesthetics. It seeks knowledge, whether this is pretty or not. It does not aim to be an art, to be pleasing to the eye or to make hearts sing. But despite this, science inevitably delivers such beauty.
You may look down the eyepiece of a microscope and consider the abstract nature of stained cells to be beautiful. You may learn about the structure of DNA, and how it is packaged into beads then fibres then looped into a chromosome, matched with a homologue and residing in a karyotype, and you may find this beautiful. You may explore the pathology of heart disease, and how our own organs try to compensate for dysfunctions of our body... and you may find this beautiful.
So perhaps science doesn't mean to be artistic, aesthetic or appealing, but it still is.