Art and Science
JOSEPH AGASSI
Boston University and Td-Aviv University
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THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SET AND SCIENCE
Much is said, and much interesting information is extant, regarding the cooperation between the arts and the
sciences. One domain may borrow from another an achievement or a technique. There is the use of photography
for artistic purposes, even the use of microphotography, and even the use of microphotographs. An there is the
employment by science and technology of artistic achievements, not only of perspective and of psychological
insights, but also of sensitivities discovered by artists to diverse phenomena. Moreover, art and science may
inspire each other. Thus, an artist like Beardsley has inspired the development of new techniques of photography
and developments such as those of acoustic science and technology suggested electronic music of all sorts.
All this belongs to a rich field which I shall not discuss. Let me say, rather, that the very cooperation between the
arts and sciences is so very thrilling because the two domains are taken to be so very distinct. We all enjoy the
cooperation of poetry and music, of paintings and music, of the theatre and music, of the theatre and poetry.
Somehow, we feel, the cooperation of art and science differs from the cooperation of art with art, however natural
or problematic (it surely seems more natural to us to mix I poetry with. music than paintings with music). The
reason is, I suppose, that we feel that art and science are so significantly different as to make their cooperation
much more intellectually exciting and thought-pro voking than the cooperation of diverse arts. The distinction
between art and science seems all too clear. .art is emotional, science factual; art is subjective, science objective;
art is pleasant, science is useful. So goes the common distinction. This distinction implicitly merges scientific
technology with science, as against art - as . if it were a matter- of course. Yet it is not clear to me why that it is so.
─ and I think. it may very well be thought that the opposite is tree, if not even obviously true. I do not see why
installing an- air-conditioner is a matter of objective technology, yet using it is subjective. And if using
it is admitted to be objective, then I do not see why using a record of Beetle's music is not. The answer to this
objection is, of course, that the Beatles are not everybody's cup of tea. But then neither. is. air-conditioning;
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More subtly, technology is divided into an art and a science- whatever requires a knack, and is a doubtful matter of trial and error, is
called subjective and an art; whatever can be done by rote with assured success is called a science. Thus is understood, for example,
the debate as to whether medicine is an. art or a science. Science is- allegedly sure and, this is all to the good; but what is sure is also
dull; art is. allegedly doubtful, but thereby also thrilling.
I find all this rather infantile. I cannot see the humdrum of the conveyor:.
belt as a science; I find it terrible and barely excusable. And I cannot
see in the bunglings of a medic or of an acoustic engineer an art - under
standable though it surely is- I can, on the contrary, see much. more in
common between the bunglings of a Befthoven and the bunglings of a
Newton. I can compare their zeal; their sense of perfection; their e$
perimentation and search for something objective, overruling the merely
subjective and the accidental as much as possible and even hoping against
all common-sense to eliminate it altogether.
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Yet I wish to endorse fully the view that science and art are inherently distinct and
can never be united or merged except as a remote and unattainable ideal. In the
present essay I shall take only one aspect of the distinction, and show how
unbridgeable it is, by a repeated effort to bridge, or close the gap between, scientific
research and artistic activity
the aim of science is the attaining of the truth, whereas the aim of art is the attaining
of beauty. And so, much as we may narrow the gap between the two, all efforts to
close it must fail.
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IWABTy' AND TRUTH
Perhaps the simplest way to close the gap is simply to allow either art or science to
betray its aim. If both are to serve the state, for example, then they can merge. If
science were to betray the end of truth and aspire to what Martin Heidegger called a
poetic truth n and were to place - the value of poetic truth above that of scientific
truth, then art and science could merge. If art will cease to search for beauty and aim
at. amusing audiences or manipulating them by psychological means, then we could
produce works of art and artistic performances on conveyor-belts.
Heidegger's talk about truth is, of course, merely a veiled proposal to make science
and art both betray their true ends and serve the state instead. Likewise those who
view the value of both art and science as
measurable by the yardstick of utility - private or social - may have
sense of neither art nor science and can thus shortcut them and talk. of
the utility of Newton or. of Beethoven.. Alternatively, these people may
have an independent sense of art and of science which can. be discussed
as their value without reference to their utility measure - even if, for
one reason or another utility happens to equal intrinsic value. In. the
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end, it seems, acknowledging the intrinsic value of art and the intrinsic value of science is a moral matter: a matter of a
primary, honest; straightforward attitude.
The word `straightforward' plays an important role in my opinion. With sophistication we can get anywhere. We may say, and I
believe we may truly say, that the end of science, its final and ideal end, the Truth,. is identical with the final end of art, the
Beautiful. It is- no accident that Plato's moat satisfactory exposition of his theory of ideas is to be found in his Symposium, that
classic study of beauty. The ideas, the world of ideas, is True, Beautiful, and Good. But scientific research still is, in a
straightforward way, the search for truth, not for beauty, and artistic creation aims at beauty, not at truth. Hence, though the final
end, perfection itself, may be the same for art and for science (extentionally speaking), the immediate end (intentionally
speaking) of artistic and of scientific activity are obviously different.
III REAsorr AND
FMoTTON
It is an interesting historical fact that the giants of the high Renaissance were Platonists and tended to blur the distinction
between art and science, truth and beauty, and in many ways which fill the literature of the history of Renaissance Art, science,
ethos. The idea of the distinction between art and science comes from the idea of the purity of science, from the view that
science is good as long as it is kept pure. This idea belongs to Sir Francis Bacon who blamed older philosophers for mixing
science and religion, science and metaphysics, science and politics. Bacon himself did not speak of art or of aesthetics. Yet the
division between the arts and the sciences was accepted by his disciples, Descartes and his followers, as well as the Royal
Society of London, and it immediately raised the problem for them: what role do the arts play in the life of a culture Descartes
hinted, and the English peot John Dryden, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, said explicitly: The duty of art is to serve
science, to make science agreeable to the public - art is merely ancillary to science; it has no role of its own. It is thus no
accident that the eighteenth century saw poetry whose content is scientific; that John Constable, the famous early nineteenth
century English painter who was the forerunner of impressionism, viewed himself a naturalist as he painted from the hand of
nature, i.e., as his saw with an untutored eye, or a naive eye, or an innocent eye - not as his theories would tell him to see. It is
no accident either that the impressionist painters advocated painting things as seen by the untutored eye, by the naive observer
who sees - as Bacon said -things as they really are, uncolored by prejudice.
The ides of the untutored eye and the role it. has played in the works of Constable and his followers has been discussed at great
lenght by E.. H.
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Gombrich in his art and Illusion; the empirical evidence of the impossibllity of seeing with the naked
eye, accumulated since Helmholtz, has been gathering in works of Gibson and Gregory. It seems to me to be
an obvious fact that the fascination and drama of such books is derived from the fact that Bacon's influence
is still tremendous, and that this influence is strong enough to make the empirical evidence cause great
discomfort to the many believers in the theory of the untutored eye, which is the theory of the separateness
of science and art. To put it as a personal experience in the Baconian style, I have observed diverse
audiences, students, colleagues, and others, greatly disturbed by any speaker who, like myself, is liable to
fuse, or confuse, art and science on occasion.
The reason so many people are disturbed w)Ien art and science are not kept separate seems to be to be
obvious and not without merit: nobody seriously wants wishful thinking, that is to say, emotion, standing in
the way of reason in its attempt to comp to the truth. The popular prejudice expressing this reasonable
sentiment is the view that reason dampens emotion and emotion dampens reason when the two comingle;
that science
is reason alone and art emotion alone; that qua scientist a scientist must have a heart made of stone, that he
must feel with his brain - just as qua artist an artist must have a brain made of straw, that he must think with
his heart. Thus, a very reasonable and commonsense view gets. its popular expression couched in a string of
inane and confused and irrational suggestions. It may well be worth examining the hold these suggestions
have on the popular imagination.
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THE $EQTJI73LIKENT FOE A SHARP SEPARATION
To repeat, people are disturbed when art and science are not kept separate in as strict a manner as possible.
Now, any requirement for a strict separation is rooted in a fear that the slightest overlap may lead to harmful
results; the harmful result is usually the outcome of a total confusion of the two. Somehow the feeling is that
the moment art is allowed the slightest foothold in science, then science loses its claim to objectivity
without any further ado; that likewise, the moment art is allowed to be cerebral to any extent whatsoever; it
loses its right to a claim on beauty: Thus, for example, when P. A. M. Dirac claimed that he used aesthetic
arguments in order to retain his celebrated equation against empirical evidence which contradicted it, the
impression was given that science lost all claim for its aspiration for truth.
This, clearly, is an error. It is admittedly the case that Dirac used aesthetic arguments, yet only as
encouragements, as giving him hope that his equation will prove defensible against known initial. criticism.
Yet, it could happen that his hopes would not be fulfilled: his. -equation could. con.ceivably fare no better
than other beautiful equations. Moreover,: though
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the equation did withstand the initial objections and thus- attained its prominence, this is not. to
say that it withstood all objections, and even Dirac himself does not now claim that he is, pleased
with it, or in general with quantum theory as it now stands. Hence; clearly, though. aesthetic
considerations did play a role, even a significant role; in; the history of science - of quantum
theory in this case - the decisive considerations are not aesthetic but those which pertain to the
truth.
The same holds for scientific or cerebral considerations in art. It is wellknown that young artists
often display aversion towards the acquisition of techniques which require cold calculations.
Often a painter overcomes
such, aversion by making a rather silly distinction between real or artistic
painting and applied or commercial art, by allowing himself to acquire
cerebral techniques for commercial art, and then unconsciously smug
gling his knowledge (preferably transformed and altered to his taste) into
his allegedly pure art. I have encountered many budding authors who
struggle bitterly because they are steeped in the conviction that a. novel
should grow organically, one page naturally following another. They regard with disdain the very thought of planning a novel by cerebral ana
lytic means. To write a synopsis of a novel, a table of contents, an es
timated length of each chapter - this seems so easy and so pointless,
not to say `commercial', that they refuse to try it. And so they may be
hopelessly frustrated. Only such people, and the popularity of the pre
judices which frustrate them, can make the public gasp at the publication
of Dostoevsky's notebooks. These notebooks, as one should expect, are
highly analytic, and entirely cerebral; they record plans, experiments,
suggestions; they do not appeal to their author's own emotions, but to his
reason. Yet this very characteristic which should be expected a priori,
is what did cause a stir.
It is thus very clear that our popular views on art and on science are
miles away from sheer commonsense.
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THE ERRORS BEHIND THE SETAEP SEPARATION
The sharp separation is an error which is deeply reflected in our present
way of life, and will not be eradicated by the mere indication that art
has a cognitive side and science an aesthetic side. Consider old works
of art and original versions of scientific theories. Both require a tra
dition, a training, a. definite approach. We do have a tradition of the one
and not of the other: we learn to appreciate the arts historically, but not
the sciences. Admittedly we do learn certain ancient doctrines,. some clas
sical scientific views such as Newton's and Lavoisier's. This is so by some
sort of default: we do not know how to avoid teaching them, and we teach
them in some highly modified versions, akin to Lamb's Stories of Shake
speare and Hamilton Harty's version of Mindel's Royal Watermusic,
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not to mention some cinematic vulgarizations of ancient lore. These do,
of course; serve a' purpose, they are substitutes for, and perhaps intro
ductions to, the real things; but for the science connoisseur, nnlike the art
connoisseur, the real thing, i.e. the originals of past scientific creative
genius, is out of reach.
Similarly, the cognitive side of art is more accessible to scientists- than
the aesthetic side of science is accessible to artists. This point was first
made in Lord Snow's enormously successful The Two Cultures and the
Scientific Revolution. In this talk, as well as in its follow up, Snow found
it necessary to blame artists for their insensitivity, through willful igno
rance, he suggested, to the aesthetic side -of science; he only grudgingly
acknowledged that scientists are often ignorant of art, and only in a
hint he admitted their ignorance of any history whatever, of art or of
science. His reason was his view that the scientific temperament is pro
gressive, and thus, in the ethics of politics on the right side (which is left),
whereas artists are natural Luddites. This, need I say, is just a degeneration
of Dryden's view of art as a handmaid of science: art should serve both
science and progressive politics, but, alas, it tends to go its own devious
way.
Both traditional defects come from the inability to take seriously the
aesthetic side of science which, in turn, comes from the view of science
as purely objective, as purely impersonal, as utterly devoid of all con
nection with other aspects of the culture except through the economic
side of things. Even the life of Madame Curie by her daughter shows no
significant link between the character of that remarkable woman and
her remarkable research. Even Helmholtz's researches- - which so ob
viously reflect his personality, his conservatism, his philosophic taste,
his taste for music - are presented not as personal but as a part of the
vast impersonal tapestry that is science.
That the alleged utter aesthetic neutrality of science is linked with its
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claim for utter objectivity, for absolute truth, can best be revealed in
the works of authors about science who deny that utter aesthetic neutral
ity. The philosophers of the conventionalist school, Poincare and Duhem
in particular, insist on the aesthetic quality of science while denying all
claim for scientific objectivity, while denying that scientific theories in
any way reflect the structure of the universe, the nature of things.
The way in which the cognitive side of art and the aesthetic side of science
come to the fore, is first and foremost through the more modern philosophy
of science, which Popper calls c< the third view)), and which may be called
gradualism. Gradualism is the theory which, first and foremost, does not
in the least deny the existence of a personal, of a subjective, element in
science, but which declares, none the less, the aim of science, to be the
objebtive and impersonal. Science, according to gradualism, gradually
undergoes the process of objectivization. Products of science, say the
gradualist, are likely to be rejected, in whole or in part, to be sifted,.to
be viewed as approximations to the truth, indeed as different approzi-
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mationa when viewed from different angles and at different times. In the same way, precisely,
the history of the cognitive side of the arts will be viewed as part and parcel of the history of
science and technology proper.
Indeed, at times this is all too obvious already, as when the artists' tools
are reinforced concrete as used by architects or subtle psychological ob
servations in the novels of the early Freudian period and slightly earlier.
All this, much as it brings art and science closer to each other, recognizes
the distinctness of their distinct ends.
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OBJECTIVIZATION IN ART AND IN SC>.ENCE
Distinct as art and science remain, they may have more in common than hitherto indicated, and
significantly so, quite apart from the interactions between the arts and the sciences, and quite
apart from the fact that the arts have a cognitive aspect and the sciences an aesthetic aspect.
These are, as I shall venture to explain, the processes of objectivization.
Let us begin with the processes themselves: with the scientific process, scientific research, and
the artistic process, the act of creation. We can contrast the art with the product, the process
with the achievement it leads us to. Somehow, we are able to belittle the achievement as
compared with the straggle. We are in possession of the achievements of the past, and we do
not think too highly of ourselves or of our possessions. But we do greatly appreciate the
straggle of those who brought what we possess into our possession. This is why it takes
training to learn to appreciate works of art of old masters: we have to learn to appreciate their
straggle, to see the process which led to the product when we contemplate the product.
This last point is a cornerstone of the philosophy of art of the celebrated E. H. Gombrich who
is, not insignificantly, a disciple of the philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, the chief
exponent of gradualism.
Much as I endorse this point of Gombrich, however, I cannot endorse the detail of it. Seeing
only troth but not beauty, as an ideal towards which to progress, he sees no point in the
objectivization of the artistic part of art, only of the cognitive part of art. Hence he views the
straggle of the artist as purely cognitive: though he sees the cognitive achievement of an old
master as much inferior to what cognitive tools a mediocre artist has today, he declares the
very straggle for that achievement essential to the old master's greatness. (I cannot offer an
exact quote from Gombrich to substantiate my reading of him, but I think this is a failing of his
style. If I have misread him I have to declare him elusive: I have tried to read him
sympathetically and carefully, and I have compared notes with others, etc.). The reason why I
disagree with this view of Gombrich's is that I find that there are many artists who have made
important artistic innovations which they themselves put to use not
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very, forcefully, but -which their less inventive contemporaries who were
of greater artistic power exploited very effectively. Gombrich. himself
notices that some great masters of the, past were arch-conservative and
some of the greatest innovators were poor artists. Gomb=ich- explains
well why people who break from old techniques need not be good artists,
since they may have nothing interesting to replace them with; but he
does not explain, and cannot explain, the fact that. innovation and great
art, much as they go hand in hand, do not always go quite together. The
question then forcefully arises, what is the struggle of the artist who is
a great artist yet not a great innovator of techniques? What else does a
great artist innovate other than techniques, other than the cognitive or
cerebral part of art? I shall return to this question soon.
The analogue of this discussion as far as the history of science is concerned
is also rather new but much less problematic. Viewing science as chiefly
cognitive - i.e. as productive of ideas which are true or false - we may
well imagine the scientist struggling with cognitive problems: is this or
that idea true? What explains this or that, etc. Now the history of science
as the history of a struggle, any struggle, is a new field; the stress on the
personal, on the moral, on the aesthetic side of the struggle - the stress
on the non-cognitive side of the struggle - is even newer. It is quite an
intriguing fact that attempts to comprehend the non-cognitive side of
the struggle is essential for the comprehension of the struggle, yet the
achievement is certainly measured as cognitive, not as personal or aes
thetic or moral. The process of science is the process of scientific objec
tivization, where objectivization is the increased approximation to the
truth, and is thus essentially cognitive though also essentially containing
non-cognitive aspects.
If we wish to retain the parallel, we would perhaps try to say in complete
parallel to the above: the process of art is the process of artistic objec
tivization, where objectivization is the increased approximation to beauty,
and is thus essentially aesthetic though also essentially containing non
aesthetic aspects.
Clearly this is Platonic, assuming the existence of both the ideal truth
and the ideal beauty. And this is the fundamental bias of the present
essay. Some may find it problematic; I do not. Clearly one might ask,
are the True and the Beautiful, or Truth and Beauty, not identical'?
And if it is, does it not collapse the arts and the sciences into a unity?
The, answer is clearly, no. Our stress is on the struggle, on the process,
and the processes of art and of science differ even if they turn out to be
workjng towards the same in the end. This, however, does not remove the
central problem which the present essay raises: what is objectivization
in the arts other than the progress of their cognitive aspects What is aes
thetic objectivization? What exactly is the approach to the beautiful?
How can we reconcile viewing beauty as the value of a- classical work of
art as manifest in its process and the same as manifest in its end? After
all, the beauty achieved and the beauty aimed at are different.
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VII
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FORK AND CONTENT
It is my inclination to view the history of art, like the history of science,
as a process of objectivization. And I owe this attitude to Robert Cogan,
the contemporary avantgardist composer of New England Conservatory.
It seems to me that there are the two sets of traditions,-that in each tra
dition there is the personal imprint of its giants, that partly this personal
imprint gets objectivized, partly it gets ironed out, or eliminated in the
process of restatement, that later leaders contribute to the objectivization
of earlier parts and replace them with newer material, in part subjective
in part exploratory,. towards newer levels of higher objectivity. The
question still is, since art does not pertain to truth, what in it can be
objectivized and howl I find this question hard to handle for want of
tools due to the following fact.
It is customary, in the tradition of modern aesthetics in the meat, to
identify the form of art with the objective and the content of art with
the subjective. This need not square with what has been said thus far
about the cognitive and the aesthetic, though all too often one tends -to
identify the two distinctions as a matter of course. For, the aesthetic
aspect of a painting by Bosch or Breugel, or of a novel by Dostoevaky or
Zola, cannot possibly be the content which is intentionally anaesthetic.
Therefore, those who identify the aesthetic with content will have to
declare them ugly and prefer to them the pre-Raphaelites and Peter Pan,
Little Lord Fazsntleroy and The Heart and all other pretty-pretty, works
one could mention off-hand. If one protests that the pretty-pretty is not
beautiful either, then one will none the less be bound to prefer Renoir to
Gauguin or Van Gogh as a matter of course - which to me seems ob
viously questionable.
That form has to do with beauty is, indeed, acknowledged even by those
who assume that art is subjective, is emotional, is content. To clarify
this, one has to present the dispute between the defenders of the view
of art as content and those who oppose them. Both parties agree that
there is no content without form except unexpressed and inarticulate
feelings; both parties likewise agree that there is no form without content
except perhaps in the world of ideas which is also incommunicable. Every
communicable item of art, then, has both form and content. The defender
of the form theory, for example Arnold Schoenberg, will say, pay attention
to form, and content will take care of itself; pay attention to form, and
choose content as you wish. There is here an asymmetry between this -view
and its opposition. The defender of content, say Richard Wagner, will
not declare form insignificant or capable of taking care of itself; he will
merely declare form ancillary, and strictly so. Thus if the recipient is
aware more of the form than of the content then the item of art traps
muted is cerebral. and thus inferior. Superior art, along these lines, re
quires botli significant emotional content and the proper form to transmit
or convey it: ideally art should be the immediate transmission of strong
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feelings from artist to public, and the artist should strive to come as close to that ideal
as possible, though it is unattainable.
Now to apply this to our problem. From the viewpoint asserting that
form is cognitive and content is artistic, clearly there can be only one
way to objectify beauty - to objectify content. The way to doing this,
then, is to develop our emotional capacities. I think this is in part true
but not sufficient. It is clear that to objectify must mean here also to
make more formal, more cerebral, and that also will not do. Yet is is
possible to say that there is room for widening the range of feelings a
culture offers its individual members, and this partly has to do with the
role of art. The psychological novel is but an obvious example; the garden
scene in Mozart's Don Giovanni is but a subtler example. The formalist,
of course, must deny the identity of art with content and thus will be
able to look for both aesthetic and cognitive aspects of art capable of
development and objectification. But it is still not clear how.
VIII HOW
CAN WE OBJECTivrzE EMOTIONS !
Let us explore the possibility that emotional content can be objectivized in the sense
that a culture offers, objectively, a range of emotions through its artistic achievements.
These emotions may be studied, then, by studying the culture's arts, and so evaluated.
It is doubtless, for example, that Beethoven has indeed expressed anger in music,
thereby giving both anger and music newer and wider scope. Similarly, Wagner gave
in music the expression of collectivism, of the individual's helpless delicious dependence on the tribe, on the emotional line which made him what he is. I am speaking
here of emotional content, not of psychology. For, the
content of psychology is statements which are true or false, whereas
emotional contents are just there, in fact. There is then a possibility to
accept them or reject them, there is even an intellectual possibility of
weighing arguments in favour or against submitting to the emotions
offered by Wagner, to the emotional bathos which are his operas. Every
patient of psychotherapy knows that he has such options as to wish or
not to wish to like someone or some feeling, and perhaps do something
about it. We may appreciate a person or an attitude and wish to endorse
it - or not. Therefore, it seems at first, the content of the art of Wagner,
or of Delacroiz, or of Baudelaire, or of Rilke, is not as unimportant as
Schoenberg said, but is of great value, though a negative one and an
objectionable one at that. Even the art of Hermann Hesse, or Rachma
ninoff, or gate gollwitz, being an expression of bovine self-pity, seems to
be of a rather significant negative value, though less that that of Wagner.
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But no. Much as I agree with the assessment of the examples just men
tiongd, I object both to the tone and to the generalization of the previous
paragraph. 9s to the tone, it is functionalist. I have in mind in particular;
Tolstoy's functionalist theory of art which is a generalization of Dryden's
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theory. According to Dryden art derives its value from its function as
an ancillary to science. According to Tolstoy it matters little to what art
is ancillary, and he approved in particular of folk-art which is always. he said - integrated in folk-life and thus - he said - accentuates aspects
of it, like the song and dance at a wedding feast or the wail of the mourners
at a. funeral. This view, whether in Dryden's or Tolstoy's formulation;
of art as ancillary, of art as at its beat when it is frankly applied art;
comes chiefly to deny the contemplative view of art, the view of art as an
object of contemplation, as Collingwood has put it. Since I endorse the
autonomy of art, I cannot possibly endorse functionalism. And indeed,
the problem I am dealing with - in what sense can art. be objectivizedmakes no sense unless we endorse the autonomy of the arts..
We may try to turn the tables and see if we do not get better results.
Whereas functionalism in art makes aesthetics a part of ethics, aes
theticism in morality makes ethics a part of aesthetics. Without any
debate I shall assume here both the autonomy of ethics and the autonomy
of aesthetics; yet I shall try to take a hint from aestheticism. Let us say,
though magnanimity is not required by our moral code, surely magnanimity
is very beautiful as Victor Hugo showed in Les Xiserables; and though
self-pity is not forbidden, surely it is ugly and was justly ridiculed by
Harpo in .I Day at the Races when he plays Rachmaninoff's C-sharp minor
dtude on a piano which literally goes to piece.
But no. This will not do either. The sentiment the previous paragraph
expresses is wrong again, and the generalization it offers is the same as
before and still false. The sentiment of aestheticism is somewhat decadent
and objectionable both morally and aesthetically. The generalization can
be refuted by many counter-examples. The misanthropic novels of Dosto
evaky, the vulgar and reactionary movie Gongs-Din which excited even
Bertholt Brecht, Degas's portrait of his parents and Grant Wood's justly
celebrated American Gothic, both of which excel in malice and pettiness,
are pieces of commendable art - and as such examples all too obvious
and all too obviously devastating. Even tribalism can become something
out of this world in Charles Ives' music, and self-pity an object of aes
thetic contemplation in the world of Marcel Proust.
And so, clearly, within the compass of classical aesthetics, on its division
between form and content, our study must remain frustrated. We have
a clear impression of progress in aesthetics through objectivization, yet
we can barely say what objectivization is in any reasonably feasible
manner. Someone may object to the claim that objectivization in the
art is abvious or that we even know what. it is. That we do not know what
it is is the major frustration expressed here. But it is obvious all the same:
anger in music as opposed to Beethoven's anger, neurotic helplessness
as opposed to Dostoevaky's heroes or Chekov's heroes. A sense of worth
as opposed to Goethe's Faust, etc. Likewise, perspective as opposed to that
of Brunelleschi or Alberti or Leonardo. Tonality, atonality - not necessa
rily Schoenberg's, catharsis, not necessarily of this or that dramatist, etc.
-
138
I~
SCIENTIA
33ETWEKN CONTENT AND FORM
t
The
classical aesthetic approach divides content from form and asks, does the beauty of a work of art lie in its content or in its form?
This approach has a long history and for many historical reasons - good, bad, and indifferent. Yet, I think, many discussions for
a long time past, couched in terms of that approach, actually made that approach burst at its seams. The idea that certain
contents fit certain forms and not others is repeatedly expressed by the use of the hackneyed metaphor of the Next Testament
regarding old wine and new bottles. I do not know how convincing is Albert Schweitzer when he correlates the religious content
of Bach's preludes and fugues with their form; but I dare say the general idea was hackneyed already then. The sensitivity of the
artist, yesterday and today, is -expressed not only in his sensitivity to content, but in his feel for the need of art for a new form, a
new medium, a new technique of expression in word, in sound, in color.
I do not wish to say that the cognitive aspect of art is purely formal. Beethoven's ability to express anger is no doubt a matter of
innovation, a cognitive process, and a matter of content, anger. His creation of new kinds of sound, new textures, created new
problems for the art forms he used, the piano sonata or the orchestral symphony; and he solved his problems by creating a new
form, or by modifying an existing form. The same goes for a religious sentiment. It may be easy enough to emulate Bach, or
Bruckner, and express even today religious sentiments in modern compositions the like of which we often hear in Hollywood
movies. When Arnold Schoenberg wished to express it, say, in -the last, the choral part, of his Survivor from Warsaw, he could
use neither tonal music nor his usual serial music; he created a new type of melody which is neither, though, admittedly akin to
the one used in Sessions Violin sonata for totally different purposes to totally different effects.
Here I would be bold and say, perhaps again in agreement with- Schoenberg's recommendation to~take care of the form and not
of content: the artist straggles to solve new problems because he has new contents, new experiences, which plainly do not fit old
forms. He invents, then, new
solutions which are new forms capable of adequately .expressing new
_
feelings. I do not quite feel at ease with this: I feel that the artist may
widen his range of feelings while exploring as an artist; art need not be
only -the expression of already given new feelings, it may be the creation
of new feelings as well.
But I am not clear as to whether there is a clear disagreement here. In
the classical theory all was clear enough, where content was emotional
and subjective, form cerebral and objective, and beauty residing in one;
or the other -possibly both, but separately nonetheless. It is no longer
clear what is feeling, what is form. As the composer Roger Sessions and
the philosopher Milic Capek both stress, we have a prevalent prejudice
that the cerebral part of art can be articulated in words no less than in
JOSEPH AGASSI
139
painting, music, poetry. But this .is not true. Certainly certain ideas, certain images, can be better conveyed in a picture than in a
thousand
words, as old Confucius said.,~
There is an ancedote, certainly spurious, of the reply Beethoven gave
to the question what did a sonata mean which he had just finished playing:
he played it all over again. Doubtlessly, this ancedote is romantic, sub
jectivist; art is content and content is best conveyed by the form chosen
for it by the artist or else the artist is inferior. Once we accept the formal
approach we can answer the question, what does a work of art mean by
formal analysis, by viewing a picture as a canvas divided into parts, by
revealing the form of a symphony. But all this is very limited. It is quite
possible that an idea can be better articulated by art, such as an answer
to the question, what do you think is the character of . a friend, or what
is New York like. If Capek is right on this, then it is hard to say any
longer where content ends and form begins, .and certainly it is impossible
to locate the aesthetic in either exclusively. It may very well be that the
aesthetic is what widens our range of feelings, that the aesthetic is the
fit of form and content, that we thus have layers of feelings, aesthetics
and other, building up alternately.
X
CULTURE AS AN ART
In his book on Movies and Society, Ian Jarvie speaks of anything well designed as a work of art, concluding that a man may - but
need not -live his life as a work of art. Literature is full of such people, of those who tried to live their lives as works of art to
varying degrees of success depending on all sorts of factors. I wish here to go further and see whether it is possible to objectify
this point: these all sorts of factors may be well designed not only in one man but even in one culture. (gad passing a character
to the culture is what, I have suggested, objectivization amounts to.)
This is not new. Indeed it is hackneyed to the extent that it raises suspicion -.and rightly so. We are over need today to correlate
the diverse arts and sciences and philosophies of a given period, and it is now fashionable to call baroque and rococo not only
all the art styles current in these periods, but even their sciences and philosophies. Of course, this can be merely a matter of coy
expression: we may call `baroque' anything that happened daring a certain span of time in the world, or in Western Europe. Of course, the history of such expressions goes to Hegel's theory
i
of the spirit of the age which is reflected in everything current in that
age and more so in the better things current in that age. In that case, calling
both painting and philosophy-of a given time `baroque' will not suffice:
we should be able to show the same spirit of the same age reflected .in
both. This should enrich our feel for, and experience of, the diverse aci'
tivities of the age. An here readers are suspicions that authors promise
l
C
140
$CIBIVTIAa
the harder thing, the sense of unity of any given age,, and when they fail they -supply a mere empty label instead.
It seems to me clear that, in a non-trivial sense, there is some truth in Hegel's idea of the spirit of an age. However remote two
activities of an age are, given enough perspective and enough contrast with other ages, some interesting connections can be
found. The very absense of motorvehicles in past ages is already a terribly interesting integrating factor. But Hegel's philosophy
is disastrous in its excesses. We must all agree that there are diverse degrees of integration, that by some lucky or unlucky
accident one culture may be more integrated than another; one tradition, artistic, scientific, political, whatever, may be better or
worse integrated in the culture than another tradition.
This final point is so trite that I wonder how come I have to make it. Arthur goestler in his famous The Sleep-walkers has
declared that the Pythagoreans represented an integrated -culture where art and science were united, and that mankind hardly
ever saw such balanced integration. Brace Mazlish and Jacob Bronowsky saw the Renaissance as such a period. Clearly it is an
ideal, and one we all see reflected, better or worse, in better or worse periods in the history of culture. Yet Plato's theory of
Ideas, in its very ahistorical declaration of Truth, Beauty and Goodness being united, spoke against approaching such a unity.
Hegel has claimed that his relativism introduces a historical dimension into philosophy. Every achievement, he says, is not better
or worse, but always the best; nevertheless, the best can develop, nevertheless it can grow. What a terrible illogicality, what a
terrible license for making all post hoc into propter hoc, for allowing everything subjective to be declared objective or
objectified by the mere say so of the philosopher, for letting anything go. The strength of Hegel was in his seeing much of the
limitstions of traditional philosophy and in his allowing us to transcend these. His weakness is the confusion he caused by
adding the new without ousting the old. Even here the radicalist effort to eradicate all the old and stick only to the newest was
criticized by him and he simply topped the new on the old. We need not accept all this confusion; we are, indeed, long past it.
We can see the limitations of the achievements of the old, we can appreciate their struggle, we need not confuse them with us, or
their views with ours: we have since learned to keep apart yet sympathize, to sympathize and criticize. We °can critically assess
different- degrees of integration of different cultures.
J. A.
An earlier version of this paper was read at a symposium on aesthetics that took place- in Tel-Aviv University on 26 March 197'2. Dr. James
Hu7let has corrected the final version and :has my gratitude.