Art and Logic
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
from The Power of Story by Tom PetersSometimes a picture speaks a thousand words. Are we evolving to the place where art and logic indeed can play in the same space? Is there really any alternative?
James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, writes in The Double Helix: “Science as I hope this work will demonstrate, rarely proceeds with the logic laymen attribute to it.”
Is it possible that is true of business models and planning processes as well?
James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, writes in The Double Helix: “Science as I hope this work will demonstrate, rarely proceeds with the logic laymen attribute to it.”
Is it possible that is true of business models and planning processes as well?
Daniel Pink argues in A Whole New Mind: “The MFA is the new MBA”. Perhaps there is some common ground here for research scientists and their business partners??
Science and art are comoplimentary expressions of our desire to find and describe the order that underlies the complex world around us. The two are, and always have been deeply connected by that desire and by their approach. Music rests on a foundation of mathematics, painting on the chemistry of pigments, dance on an underlying sense of physics and physiology. Beyond these more obvious links, is the deeper connection of trying to express the unseen in a way that makes its structure understandable.
Scientists and artists both face the challenge of constantly identifying new ways of extracting pattern from the “noise” of reality and using that insight to educate us, amuse us, and improve our lives.
We are not evolving to a place where these two expressive arms of creativity paly in the same place. We have always been there. Using their fundamental sameness to inform our experience is the challenge we face. Da Vinci would get it.
Even Einstein understood the linkage between the arts and science. In Einstein: His Life and Universe the author shares how Einstein would turn to his violin in order to help him open his mind for some of the scientific challenges that he was trying to unravel. Einstein found an interplay between the science and the arts that resulted in disruptive breakthroughs. Jack has hit the nail on the head. Da Vinci got it. Maybe it is time that we had more Renaissance men and women.