Inquiry in the Arts and Sciences

Philosophy ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 71 (276) ◽  
pp. 255-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
James O. Young

In his 1836 lectures to the Royal Institute, the great landscape painter John Constable stated that ‘Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.’ Landscape, he went on to say, should ‘be considered a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments.’1 Constable makes two claims in this striking passage. The first is that painting is a form of inquiry. This is, by itself, a bold claim, but Constable goes on to state that painters and scientists inquire in the same way. As controversial as these views are, both of them have been sympathetically entertained in recent years by several philosophers. In particular, Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin have maintained that painting, and the other arts, are forms of inquiry, and that they are akin to the sciences in important respects.2 I think, however, that Constable is only half right. Although I agree that the arts are forms of inquiry, I will argue that the arts and the sciences employ radically different methods. That the arts and the sciences are very different forms of inquiry might seem to be a point so obvious as to be scarcely worth making. We can, however, appreciate more clearly how the arts can contribute to our knowledge by contrasting its methods with those of science.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-251
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob

The Marxists had it right all along, they just got tripped up by their materialism. Early modern capitalism opened vast new worlds, particularly in the arts and sciences, only the traffic went both ways. Creative agents invented new markets and pushed commerce in directions that favored enterprises immensely cosmopolitan and innovative, often solely for the sake of beauty and display. Commerce offered a context but the nobility, and not an imagined bourgeoisie, had the edge when it came to exploiting the market for objets. Paintings could be traded for property, land, and houses. Princes could sponsor natural philosophers, and the fluidity in values meant that good investors, like good practitioners of the arts and sciences, took an interest in all aspects of learning. The interrelatedness of the representational arts and natural philosophy stands as one of the central themes in this tightly integrated collection of essays. We now have a vast historiography telling us that we should no longer teach early modern science without reference to the art of the time, and vice-versa. The point is beautifully illustrated by an exhibition recently held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (spring 2002) on the art of Pieter Saenredam. Working in Utrecht in the 1630s, he used geometry to regularize and make precise the angles and corners found in the exquisite paintings he made of the city's churches. He knew as much about geometry as he did about chiaroscuro. At precisely the same moment, an hour or two away by barge, Descartes in Leiden put the final touches on his Discourse on Method (1637). In effect he explained to the world why precision and clarity of thought made possible the kind of beauty that Saenredam's paintings would come to embody.


2021 ◽  
Vol 153 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-318
Author(s):  
Alexander Fidora ◽  
Nicola Polloni

This contribution engages with the problematic position of the mechanical arts within medieval systems of knowledge. Superseding the secondary position assigned to the mechanical arts in the Early Middle Ages, the solutions proposed by Hugh of St Victor and Gundissalinus were highly influential during the thirteenth century. While Hugh’s integration of the mechanical arts into his system of knowledge betrays their still ancillary position as regards consideration of the liberal arts, Gundissalinus’s theory proposes two main novelties. On the one hand, he sets the mechanical arts alongside alchemy and the arts of prognostication and magic. On the other, however, using the theory put forward by Avicenna, he subordinates these “natural sciences” to natural philosophy itself, thereby establishing a broader architecture of knowledge hierarchically ordered. Our contribution examines the implications of such developments and their reception afforded at Paris during the thirteenth century, emphasising the relevance that the solutions offered by Gundissalinus enjoyed in terms of the ensuing discussions concerning the structure of human knowledge.


2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Robert Bielecki

Abstract Robert Bielecki. Voice and Case in Finnish in the Light of Zabrocki’s Theory of Person. Lingua Posnaniensis, vol. L IV (1)/2012. The Poznań Society for the A dvancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL ISSN 0079-4740, ISBN 978-83-7654-103-7, pp. 21-34. This paper attempts to demonstrate the properties of the categories of voice and case in Finnish in the light of Zabrocki’s theory of Person. The presented morphosyntactic, syntactic and semantic properties of words taking part in diathesis lead us to formulate sentences (theorems) belonging to the sphere of the postulated grammar of person of this language. In Finnish, particular personal meanings undergo both lexicalization (in the form of appropriate personal pronouns) and grammaticalization (in the form of personal endings). Moreover the Finnish language seems to operate with a collective personal meaning, where three particular communicative statuses do not undergo differentiation. This kind of personal meaning seems to be only grammaticalized in Finnish; it lacks a pronoun lexifying such a collective personal meaning. Because of the high degree of syncretism of the nominative and (endingless) accusative on the one hand and the passive and impersonal voice on the other, Finnish contains significant overlapping between passive structures - where the three personal meanings undergo specification - and impersonal structures - where the three personal meanings undergo unification. Notwithstanding, only in sentences of the type Kana on tapettu ‘One has killed the hen’, ‘The hen has been killed’ (and with smaller probability Kana tapetaan ‘One kills (will kill) the hen’, (‘The hen is (will be) killed’)) do we encounter total ambiguity in respect of the personal meaning semified by the predicate (the collective person vs. third person).


2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-63
Author(s):  
Ireneusz Kida

Abstract Ireneusz Kida. The Problem of Syntactic Ambivalence in Corpus Linguistics. Lingua Posnaniensis, vol. L IV (1)/2012. The Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL ISSN 0079-4740, ISBN 978-83-7654-103-7, pp. 57-63. The purpose of this article is to present a technique of dual annotation of Old English ambivalent structures in diachronic annotated corpus linguistics. In languages there are often structures which are ambivalent, and it is difficult to establish whether they are main or dependent. These clauses are problematic for a corpus linguist annotating them for computer analysis of word order configurations. As a solution to this problem we suggest that such structures be annotated in two ways, namely on the one hand as main and on the other hand as dependent. Such a procedure allows one to obtain more objective results from word order analysis. Moreover, dual annotation is more flexible and is able to grasp the changeable nature of language


2020 ◽  
pp. 253-262
Author(s):  
Maria Jelda Doria

The study presents the freedom of the arts and sciences and the principles regarding the protection of intellectual property, and it is aimed at analyzing the complex balance between the former and the latter. In order to thoroughly understand this relationship, it is first necessary to clarify what the two elements of this balance are: on the one hand, the freedom of the arts and sciences, which is intimately related to the individual right to access to scientific, artistic and cultural developments, and, on the other, intellectual property regimes. Secondly, it is essential to examine the possible interferences of the protection of one of the two elements under discussion on the other element. Finally, it is fundamental to discuss how different jurisdictions have approached this issue. The whole contribution is conducted in a Comparative and International Law perspective: Italian, European and International Law will be examined. Besides, there will be some interesting hints about the solutions adopted in the US legal system, which are particularly interesting.


Author(s):  
Tom McLeish

‘I could not see any place in science for my creativity or imagination’, was the explanation, of a bright school leaver to the author, of why she had abandoned all study of science. Yet as any scientist knows, the imagination is essential to the immense task of re-creating a shared model of nature from the scale of the cosmos, through biological complexity, to the smallest subatomic structures. Encounters like that one inspired this book, which takes a journey through the creative process in the arts as well as sciences. Visiting great creative people of the past, it also draws on personal accounts of scientists, artists, mathematicians, writers, and musicians today to explore the commonalities and differences in creation. Tom McLeish finds that the ‘Two Cultures’ division between the arts and the sciences is not after all, the best classification of creative processes, for all creation calls on the power of the imagination within the constraints of form. Instead, the three modes of visual, textual, and abstract imagination have woven the stories of the arts and sciences together, but using different tools. As well as panoramic assessments of creativity, calling on ideas from the ancient world, medieval thought, and twentieth-century philosophy and theology, The Poetry and Music of Science illustrates its emerging story by specific close-up explorations of musical (Schumann), literary (James, Woolf, Goethe) mathematical (Wiles), and scientific (Humboldt, Einstein) creation. The book concludes by asking how creativity contributes to what it means to be human.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 567-567
Author(s):  
Angel Duncan

Abstract This session identifies common misconceptions about identity for persons living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Going beyond diagnostic brain imaging and neurocognitive testing, case studies and research in creativity from around the United States highlights consciousness of persons living with ADRD. Reviewing and discussing artworks is aimed to set dialogue in the question of where memory deposits emerge when engaged in creativity. Through art therapy techniques, this type of self-expression may provide new avenues in treatment for dementia care. Exploring the arts from those with Mild Cognitive Impairment to late stage Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, such as frontotemporal dementia, consciousness seems to remain intact despite neural death. This session aims to discourage poor spending allocations and establishing meaningful care. From clinical research trials to creativity of self-expression, the importance of why the arts and sciences matter are demonstrated as effective modalities that enhance quality of life.


Richard Nichols, The Diaries of Robert Hooke, The Leonardo of London, 1635-1703 . Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild, 1994, Pp. 185, £15.00. ISBN 0- 86332-930-6. Richard Nichols is a science master turned historian of science who celebrates in this book Robert Hooke’s contributions to the arts and sciences. The appreciation brings together comments from Hooke’s Diaries , and other works, on each of his main enterprises, and on his personal interaction with each of his principal friends and foes. Further references to Hooke and his activities are drawn from Birch’s History of the Royal Society, Aubrey’s Brief Lives , and the Diaries of Evelyn and of Pepys. The first section of the book, ‘Hooke the Man’, covers his early years of education at home in Freshwater, at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon joined the group of experimental philosophers who set him up as Curator of the Royal Society and Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Bishopsgate. Hooke’s domestic life at Gresham College is described - his intimate relationships with a series of housekeepers, including his niece, Grace Hooke, and his social life at the College and in the London coffee houses.


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