The marriage of science and art is not as counter-intuitive as might seem at first glance. One of the world’s most renowned scientists, Leonardo da Vinci, also happened to be one of the most acclaimed artists of all time.
He designed war machines, helicopters, and other innovative machinery and he also painted works of art that are priceless in today’s terms.
The marriage of science and art is not as counter-intuitive as might seem at first glance. One of the world’s most renowned scientists, Leonardo da Vinci, also happened to be one of the most acclaimed artists of all time.
He designed war machines, helicopters, and other innovative machinery and he also painted works of art that are priceless in today’s terms.
Until recently, the national departments of Science and Arts cohabited in the same ministry. Their subsequent separation might support the argument that they are too different to be in a relationship together, but perhaps the split was for other pragmatic reasons.
The synergy between the sciences and the arts can easily be seen here at home where Grahamstown hosts two national festivals one for the arts and the other for the sciences.
Their respective subject matter overlaps a lot more than most people think. At Scifest, a popular mathemagician spoke passionately about the beauty and the patterns in mathematics, almost as if he were describing a great work of art.
On our front cover, a dazzling photograph of the laser show is a remarkable example of beauty created in binary codes of sophisticated computers.
The audience was in a constant state of amazement at the incredible images flying through the air during the entire show.
A scientist and ardent conservationist, Noel Ashton, delivered almost his entire presentation using photographs of his own paintings and sculptures of whales and dolphins.
He was, in many ways, preaching to the converted, because most people in the audience supported his ideals of conservation, but if anyone was in doubt about the value of protecting the ocean’s mammals, then they were surely convinced by Ashton’s artwork.
The point of drawing parallels between the arts and the sciences is to show that there is no need to fear the sciences.
If one can appreciate the beauty of a work of art or comprehend the symmetry of a musical score then it is not a far stretch to grasp the beauty of numbers.
Scifest is doing an incredible job by making mathematics and science more accessible and less scary to our broader population.
