Painter. Sculptor. Engineer. Architect. Botanist. Zoologist. Philosopher. Cartographer. Draughtsman. Astronomer. Inventor. And an accomplished horseman.
In the late 1400s, when Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci (usually just Leonardo da Vinci) was making his indelible mark (literally) on the world, there was no real separation of arts and sciences.
In fact science wasn’t yet even a word. The study of ‘natural philosophy’ was a predecessor for what we call science now, but it wasn’t even something you could specialize in until the late 1500s, and the word ‘scientist’ wasn’t used at all until the 1800s.
Clearly that’s changed.
When I tell people that I am a (climate) scientist, it’s clear that many of them have certain preconceptions about what sort of person that makes me: ‘left-brained’, logical, studious, organized, and quite possibly anti-social (I mean, it’s not aaaall wrong). I have spent a good bit of time hanging out with people in a business mentoring group, many of whom were life coaches, writers, designers, musicians, and fine artists, and it was notable how many times they would refer to some trait about themselves, and say something like ‘not like Anne’. Most of them did not know me at that time, merely that I was a scientist.
And when we think about people in ‘the arts’, we tend to think of them as passionate, flaky, disorganized, creative, non-conforming, and often gregarious.
As with virtually all stereotypes, there are kernels of truth in these character profiles, but more often than not, they are anywhere from wildly-to-slightly off the mark. And also as with all stereotypes, we do each other a gross disservice by continuing to apply them. Our ability to get to know each others’ talents, perspectives, and approaches are thoroughly impoverished when we start from a place of stereotypes.
But this is mostly not our fault.
Since about a century after Leonardo was born, we have allowed our studies, and our identities as students, to be separated into one of the two big buckets of arts or sciences. We readily fall into the trap of believing we are better at one than the other, and that they really don’t belong at the same table of continued study. When you go to college you will typically pursue either a bachelor of arts, or sciences. You don’t just get a bachelor’s degree.
I think this is wrong. It does us ALL a disservice and I want to explore alternatives that help support more renaissance-thinking.
For example….
Pick up any field guide on a biological subject - plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, whatever. One of the key values of these guides is that they have pictures. Sometimes it’s photos, sometimes hand-drawn illustrations. This is a critical piece of the study of biology - the ability to capture, understand and interpret ‘form’. Being able to sketch something in the field is an incredibly valuable skill for a biologist. So, good biologists are both artists and scientists.
Some of the best musicians and composers have an innate ability to recognize and replicate ‘pattern’ in music. It’s the same skill that often makes musicians good mathematicians. (For real - this is a correlation, and has been a recognized association since ancient Greece).
In my own work, I am often found sketching a concept on a white board, and obviously, I like to write - both ‘artsy’ components of a ‘sciency’ career.
It makes some sense to me that we break down learning and study into notions of ‘subjects’ (though even here I feel as though we start that too early in a students’ schooling and constrain it unnecessarily), but it makes no sense to me that we engage in the process of separating those subjects into either arts or sciences. And it makes even less sense that we make students feel as though they have to ‘concentrate’ in one or the other (at any stage).
Side note: Obviously, there is value in employers being able to understand what students know about the process of quantitative and qualitative analysis and reasoning, but I think that can be accomplished in lots of ways. More on that later.
I’m also going to argue that some of our most challenging 21st Century problems require us to bring both arts and sciences to bear - in the same job.
Leonardo was clearly an amazing man with a virtually limitless imagination and an incredible thirst for knowledge throughout his life. However, he was allowed to (and was mentored) in pursuing what he showed talent in and wanted to learn. Today’s students don’t always have that sort of opportunity. Our system of education, (including the way we test students) is partly responsible for that.
So this week, I’m going to explore education a bit. For example, is there any way we can bake more integration of arts and science and/or more ‘personal study’ into our formal education system? What would it do if we could?
What about beyond our formal education system? What role do other institutions play for early education and could we extend concepts and practice of education, mentoring, and apprenticeship into adulthood? And what difference might that make?
When does education become training and vice versa? Do we need to change those boundaries?
I believe the way we learn is key to how we ‘do’ in the 21st Century and beyond.
I also think it’s possible that multiple forces are coming together to create a new renaissance in education, work, and the value of human endeavor.
So I hope you don’t mind being taken along on my brief exploration this week of what our next chapter could look like if we shook up our ideas around education.
While I understand the science-art gradient and have been at parties of artists who have never met a scientist ("I always wanted to ask why the sky is blue"), I also live along the science-religion axis (Diana went from artist to Rabbi). I have consistently found that scientists often also are artists, musicians or religious leaders, but I have rarely observed the obverse. Discuss?