Alexis De Guzman

ENG 110C

Prof. Emerson

April 3, 2018

Art in Science: How Art Can Be Useful in a Scientific and Educational World With Supporting Arguments From John Lehrer and Yo Yo Ma

 

Art. According to Dictionary.com it means, “The class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings.” What does that have to do with someone’s education? Yo Yo Ma explains this concept in his essay titled, “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education”. What about art’s involvement in a more specific education? Moreso, what does art have to do with someone’s education in science?  In his his essay to inform people of science’s need for art titled, “The Future of Science is…..Art?”, Jonah Lehrer approves of art in a scientific education.Although it may seem surprising, art belongs in science education because it aides learning and understanding, it helps us reflect on the past and look forward into the future.

Art can help students learn difficult scientific concepts because art can invite a visual element into most classrooms. When you’re a student it feels like your workload is endless! Anything to make it easier for you is a blessing. I know for me, science is not one of my core functions in the brain, but my sight is! Most everyone can look at something and grasp it easier than when getting the idea explained to them with just words for communication. Showing is better than telling. Art, being a way to communicate to people using sculptures, builds, and drawings, is a great way of showing instead of telling an idea.

Art can be an aid in understanding ideas that aren’t tangible or are too difficult to explain, ideas that are too big to describe with words alone.For example, in John Lehrer’s essay, “The Future of Science….Is Art?,” Lehrer explains that in the 1920’s scientist Neil Bohr, “was struggling to reimagine the structure of matter” and “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.” Lehrer elaborated with saying, “Ordinary words couldn’t capture the data.” Bohr went on to create the “Bohr Model” that although in the later future was proven to be incorrect, it was used as a tool to help people better understand the concept of atoms, that normally may be too difficult to explain using words,  by instead using a display. Yes a display, a sculpture if you will, as mentioned before a sculpture is certainly qualifying as a piece of art, therefore, art can be used in science.

Helping people learn by encouraging creativity and approaching ideas from new angles is yet another way art helps people learn. Although I strongly agree that art does belong and is important in a scientific world, some people do not think in the same way that I do. In my opinion, art is the most important of all subjects because it can help to give a better understanding in each subject. Just like Yo Yo Ma explains in his essay, “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education,” art is very useful on all levels of education. hHe states, “The values behind arts integration-collaboration, flexible thinking, and disciplined imagination-lead to the capacity to innovate” (258). Art allows people to think outside of the box and elaborate on their ideas. People can use their skills in the arts and apply them to other courses of education, like science, to open their minds and share their ideas more comfortably.

In the past, similar to the present,  people had various ways to help teach students ideas. Some, like Bohr, using art, was a way to help people understand the scientific ideas about atoms that he was trying to convey. On the other hand, in Yo Yo Ma’s essay, he talks about how in the past leading up to the present, art had not been used in education. And when art has been used in an education system, is has not been made as important to learn as science, technology, engineering, and math. That is the idea of “STEM” that is used in many school systems today and has been in the past. I, for one, agree with Yo Yo Ma and his idea that art should be incorporated in STEM and should be “STEAM”. In Ma’s essay he writes, “For me the most proficient way to teach the values of collaboration, flexibility, imagination, and innovation-all skill sets needed in today’s world- is through the performing arts. If you have these tools, you can do well in any field from software engineering to the biosciences.”. Art can be used as a helpful tool to excel in most any subject when applied correctly, like drawings or songs to help remember specific ideas when studying for a test. Succeeding when getting your education is the most important, you want to understand what you are learning, you want to know it. Art is really an important factor in an education, even when that education is science based.

Despite the benefits of art just mentioned, a tension between scientists and artists persist. When I think about art helping in understanding what you are learning, like in a scientific education, I think about it like Yo Yo Ma does, as mentioned previously. Other people however don’t see what Ma and I see though. Lehrer shares in his essay, “Of course the standard response of science is that such art is too incoherent and imprecise for the scientific process. Beauty isn’t truth”. Science thinks in this reverse way that art is too complicated to be demonstrated with works of art. Science puts its nose up to art in the sense that art is below it, that science is too involved to be displayed as just art. When really, science should be putting its nose up to words! Many people struggle, as many don’t, to understand a number of ideas in the scientific world. Art is only making it easier for people by using the technique of display, so that people can use their sight, along with the word definitions, combined to help them process an idea.

Where science has said that art is “too incoherent and imprecise for the scientific process”(Lehrer), easily written as, science is too big for art to grasp. Yo Yo Ma helps push art to the same level in his essay on page 2 in saying, “The arts teach us that there is something that connects us all and is bigger than each of us.” Art has and endless volume of ideas and concepts just like science!

Science is endless. Just like many of the rest of the worlds subjects, there is always more to know and always more things to discover and learn about. Science is limitless. Just like science, ideas in art are without end. There are limitless possibilities for what can be made up as art. Anything can be designed, anything can be made up, anything can be displayed. Art is a great appliance to science, as it keeps up with its openness, it can assist in making a scientific idea clear to someone.

With art and science being equals, there is no reason not to combine them when trying to learn something. When installing art into the core educational system many people can better enjoy science, but I believe many more people can better enjoy art. Art is something anyone can do, it’s not as specific as science. It is extremely flexible, this also aids in combining it with science because it is flexible to all science’s enormous ideas, as mentioned previously.

Art is so extremely flexible, anyone is capable of doing it, therefore no one feels left out. Incorporating it with science can help students learn scientific ideas more efficiently because the arts can help them express those ideas in their own way. What better way is there to learn something other than your own way of understanding it? I know when I know the concept around an idea and can explain it in my own way it makes it far more easier for me in that subject. When a subject, such as science, comes easier to a person, it makes them enjoy it more.When students are able to personally express new concepts, they invest in their learning, and this makes for more enthusiastic learners. Ma puts it this way, “We are all addressing the same issues with different names attached to them. STEAM will help us get there by solving the education problem. Kids will then go to school because it is a passion and a privilege, not a requirement.”. These new educational pathways make learning sciences, along with other important “core” subjects a facile task to victory in.

Associating art with science is only to better us. It is to help us grow and gain a better understanding in what we are trying to learn. There is no competition. Like Lehrer states in his essay, “we will need to draw from both science and art, so that each completes each other.” Combining the two will only lead to the purpose of better comprehension of ideas behind science, if not nothing at all. In other words, it wouldn’t hurt if the two had this positive relationship. Any strategy to help learn new concepts easier is in my opinion always worth the try, so why not an art attempt too?

Works Cited

“Dictionary.com.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/.        

Lehrer, Jonah. “Seed Magazineabout.” The Future of Science…Is Art? § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM, 16 Jan. 2008, seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_future_of_science_is_art/.

Ma, Yo-Yo. “‘Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education’ By Yo Yo Ma.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Jan. 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/yoyo-ma/behind-the-cello_b_4603748.html.