TOK Essay 2: Scientific knowledge vs Art

My dear readers,

Apologies for the late post. I was caught up with doing my work, I am proud to say that the worst is over.
Over the day yesterday I was working on my TOK essay. I post it now hoping that it will provide a little insight on your interpretation of this issue.

Matthew Tan

10^th February 2014                               

Scientific knowledge is discovered, while art is created. Discuss this statement

In our antecedent session in TOK we perlustrated John Cage’s acclaimed “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds” three movement composition. Despite my inclination of this piece to be considered one of the superlative art pieces in history, many of my friends controverted this paradigm and contended with the idea that it failed consummate the methodologies that defined an art. After excogitating this issue intensely, I realised that albeit we hold the paradigm that we hold piece in the particular outlook of an art piece and, could have been premediated to have been so, the piece itself could be scrutinized as a study of psychology, a natural science. This spearheaded the knowledge question that I had engendered previously and present now: To what extent does our faith play a role in scientific discovery and artist creation?

In order to ruminate on this issue, each methodology has to be inspected with utmost care. Art, as a way of knowing, subsumes three methodologies: the reverberation of the audience of which the piece is presented to, the calibre of which the art piece was created and lastly the animus of which the piece was created for. The natural science is classed with two methodologies: falsification, of which the elucidation of a particular phenomenon is made by determining what the phenomenon fails to perform, and verification, where the elucidation of a particular phenomenon is rendered through experimentation and the result being true to the hypothesis.

With the word limitation on this essay, I will only wend this essay so that it illustrates only the most exigent of methodologies so as to create the uttermost profound insight on this particular issue. After much deliberation, I have determined to discuss falsification as well as response. I have put falsification under analysis on the postulation that a piece of art cannot be verified as unlike falsification studies, an array of art pieces cannot contain a trend. For example, Newton’s conceptualization of momentum has not only subsisted for over a century for it has portrayed a similar mathematical trend for any integer or non-integer value of the numbers. It is theoretically impossible for there to be a trend manifested in the form of paintings or any other visual art piece, as a change in the piece itself causes it to deviate from the trend from which it was to originate from.  The second methodology put under consideration is the reverberation from the audience. This is due to my theorization that the methodologies which define a good art piece is solely based on this methodology in particular. An instance of this would be the three part movement “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds” piece by John Cage where the audience, having been apprised of the philosophical connotations of this piece, were astonished of the calibre of the art piece due to the multitudinous frequency of people required to allow the piece to come into fruition. Their acumen allowed them to understand the profound implications of this peace, lest it not be celebrated as a ubiquitous piece in this modern time and age.

I have developed the thesis that faith as a way of knowing predisposes our ability to assimilate both methodologies as nonpartisan determinants of what is considered art and science respectively. In the instance of the three movement composition of “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds” by John Cage, almost the entire audience who were present came in with the preconception of the esoteric implications of the piece and a rough delineation of the piece and would have thus enjoyed the piece regardless of how it was presented, with the thinking that the piece was too esoteric for one to completely comprehend the implications of the piece itself for that particular individual. In a sense, this mimics the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, where everyone were to pretend that the piece of clothing existed or was open to interpretation as the assemblage were given the pretext beforehand that “those who cannot see the emperor’s new clothes are stupid”. However confuting that thesis is not hard. The idea that the emperor’s clothes is open to the interpretation of the reader is an art form in itself as the congregation attempts to nurture an ideal imaginary image of what the king should be wearing. The reflection of this imaginary image allows individuals to further contemplate using imagination as a way of knowing and how this reflects on particular beliefs, such as the archetypical conception and stature of a monarch and how it allows people to descend to the paradigm that there are certain individuals that are born equally but are placed as more important individuals than others. Therefore the intention of the piece brings people to believe of the idea of the “Emperor’s new clothes” as a work of art. This is in the case where the artist implication has been insinuated before. However copious numbers of artists have passed away not knowing the artistic rationale of doing such a piece. As a result, the intention of many artists will have to be construed by experts of personal interpretations which do not necessarily have to mirror the true intentions of the artist. Thus whether or not a piece of work is considered so is often relative to the audience.

Similarly, this understanding of faith and the interpretational merits of the arts can also be applied to the natural sciences as well. In the 1990s, Dr Masaru Emoto executed a series of experiments observing the power of thoughts or in any other permutation part thereof, such as prayer or meditation, on the formation of crystalline structures of water when flash frozen. The results showed huge correlation between the crystalline structures of water and the thoughts that were surrounding the particular structure at the time of crystallisation. However much this may be expounded as an experiment involving verification, one can argue that the results corralled and refined may have been done by a process of falsification, that the results itself show that the correlation between thoughts and experimental results are anything but. It is erratic to stipulate that it is done by the process of verification as, had the experiment been reciprocated, we would not see the exact same results but essentially results that showed that the results were far from random. The derivation of results being random is also in effect biased. Has there been a mathematical derivation of the results that has not been conducted and found yet? Or do we believe utilising the ideology of faith that the results are truly random?

Lastly, the dogma of a deity can be implied here. Many scientists consider themselves rediscoverers of the blueprints of which God created the world. Considering that scientists, who claim to have been given the creativity and the means to construct or formula scientific claims claim to, having been given the medium, resources and creativity to construct such a phenomena, be rediscoverers of God. Analogous endorsements can be said by many artists as well. It depends on how the artist or scientist views their creation: whether as a work of God, a work of man or as an adaptation of formulations of both.

The vindication for our inquest now seems to be clear; that it is up to the interpretation of the methodologies that determine our perception of the changeability of nature to determine if an art piece is created or rediscovered, or if a science piece is created or rediscovered. It would thus not be considered cerebral to say that the piece of work, had it succeeded, to be considered original or discovered.

Cheers,

Matthew Tan