Art and science are both terms whose meanings have been subject
to change over time. At
the end of the twentieth century, the terms tend to be used antithetically.
Current views of
the relationship between the spheres of activity that they connote range
from a sweeping
dismissal of any connection to an opposing but less extreme conviction
that scientists and
artists have something in common. The latter belief apparently at least
partly stems from
an underlying feeling that at any one time both activities are, after all,
products of a single
culture. The woolly shade of C. P. Snow's idea of there being
‘two cultures’ in the Britain
of the 1950s at once rises to view if one attempts to pursue analysis along
these lines.In setting up a conference called ‘The Visual Culture of Art and
Science from the
Renaissance to the Present’ the organizing committee was not attempting
to resolve any
kind of debate that may be perceived to exist in regard to the separation
or otherwise of
the domains of art and science. Rather, we wished to bring together historians
of science
working on areas that are of interest to historians of art, and historians
of art working on
areas that are of interest to historians of science, as well as
practising artists and scientists
of the present time who show an interest in each others' fields. We
were, of course, aware
that this agenda raised questions in regard to present-day relationships
between art and
science, but we hoped that, as we were dealing with a range of historical
periods, any light
that was shed would be moderately illuminating rather than blindingly lurid.
The meeting,
which took place on 12–14 July 1995, mainly at the Royal Society
in London, was
organized jointly by the British Society for the History of Science, the
Association of Art
Historians and the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS)
– a joint
committee of the Royal Institution, British Association and the Royal Society.
The
historical examples presented at the conference showed a wide variety of
interactions
between art and science. The success of the conference (it attracted an
audience of about
200) suggested very strongly that art, which has a large public following,
can be used to
encourage an interest in science, whose public following, according to
scientists, could be
better.
Between understanding and appreciation. Current science communication in Denmark
