In an age where so much interest, admiration and funding is directed towards scientific research, we should not forget the dangers it can harbor and the value of creativity.
Why this snobbery towards creativity?
Van Gough or Einstien? Miro or Crick? Paint brush or Pipette? There is a continuous butting of heads when it comes to liberal arts versus science, to the point where we pigeon the people who study them.
The recently published black list of “Soft” A level subjects was peppered with art, design, and generally “un-classical” subjects (Not to mention those who dared to pursue media studies). While it is acceptable for academic institutions to prize more demanding subject choices, it shows a barefaced narrow mindedness to dismiss the creativity involved in what have become “lesser” disciplines. Why should imagination and commitment be deemed deficient qualifications for academic candidates?
This feeds into the general clashing of heads between leaders of artistic and scientific spheres. Canadian researchers recently suggested scientists must be better than artists. Their reasoning? Because while anyone could pick up a paint brush, most couldn't sort the mysteries of gravity. So Newton beats Picasso…apparently. (The fact that a hippo, given pencil and canvas, could better the efforts of any safety goggled scientist was apparently unimportant). The very fact that science is only deemed suitable for a selected few marks it out as a somewhat exclusive discipline. We cannot, or course, use this to discredit the entire field (no more than Monet could blame Einstein that he couldn't work the maths) but it highlights the universal accessibility of the arts.
Paradoxically, however, the arts are dismissed as self-indulging, while science is championed the key to man's ills. We naturally accept that anything geared towards cures for disease or technological advance is in out interests. True in parts, but think again. More popular omissions to the scientists CV include…. the atom bomb? Since these revelations in nuclear technology, a very small group of people armed with this explosive information could leave the earth in want of serious reconstructive surgery. Note the capacities of a Muppet like Bush to incense rival nuclear nations, and your sense of global security might just shrivel to the size of a raisin. When we just had our fists, manual fighting was pretty much fair play - an eye for an eye and all that- but the pace of scientific discovery is rapidly out-stripping its social responsibility. Can modern society can keep up with the threats of modern science, or do we need to throttle it back to avoid a potential Armagedon?
Science and technology are tied up with political, military and financial issues, and there is too much greed in this world for it not to spread into the wrong hands. Modern science is far from neutral, and often produces results skewed by the vested interests of its funders. The U.S government currently uses extortion (via the threat of withheld funding) to draw research results in line with their own objectives.
So while the scientific world harbours these threats, the arts make life enjoyable (while we wait for the next Hiroshima) If we withdrew from our culture Black Books, Banksy, The Beatles and Milton, I doubt test tubes and Petri dishes would fill the void. Quite why Tessa Jowel deemed it acceptable to make a smash and grab raid on lottery supplies - a major source of arts funding- to meet the rising costs of the 1212 Olympics is entirely unacceptable. The impact of this move has been widespread and damaging. The Cambridge Arts Theatre, for example, has been deprived of its annual 176 000 subsidy as a result. Alongside this, the Welcome Trust has recently announced a 4 billion/year investment project for scientific research. The fact is, we tolerate this imbalance, and why? Because the arts are still seen as a luxury. They're not, they're necessary.
If we continue to throttle arts funding, we force it to seek relief in the arms of private investors, hence constructing a specialized artistic elite catering for their own interests.
The scientific method is ultimately a mere mechanism for trying to understand the world - not in itself detrimental - but it is vulnerable to exploitation. And while we should not confuse science with human destructiveness, it does provide a tool for it. So is one field “better” than the other? Well no, of course not, and you can hardly compare (which I should have maybe considered a few hundred words back) but we shouldn't accept this deliberate, bare faced depreciation of the arts. What's wrong with creativity?
