There’s this classic phrase: “It’s more of an art than a science.” It points to a real dichotomy, but it’s just so absurd to me to name the sides of this dichotomy “art” and “science.”
Art and science are broad concepts, but personally, I’d define them something like:
Science is process of predicting, testing, and measuring used to learn about the world. Art is a process of examining, communicating, understanding experiences and ideas through a variety of media.
But back to that godawful phrase. What definitions does it imply? All it does is set a dichotomy of “intuitive processes, that require monitoring and adaptive strategy” vs “calculated processes that involve executing rigid plans.”
Planning a dazzling firework show, or baking a cake isn’t “science” just because you have to measure ingredients ahead of time. These activities aren’t remotely motivated by learning.
And what, deft negotiators and motorcycle maintainers are “artists” because they follow intuition and improvising their strategy on the fly?
All this phrase does is take something that obviously has more the vibe of one category (firework shows are very pretty, visual, emotional, etc), and then delight in confusingly mis-labelling it it because it involves some secondary attribute typical of the other category (measuring powders and having safety protocols).
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kip
in reply to Sam FM • •SURE, it's not really right to say e.g. baking is a science whereas cooking is an art. Technically both are skills involving both instructions and intuitions, and neither is literally about doing science or creating art
HOWEVER!!
I think people do basically understand that "this is more art than science" means "this is more about intuition than being good at following straightforward instructions." Therefore: communication win
Sam FM
in reply to kip • •My issue with the phrase is not that people are misunderstanding each other, but that the use of this phrase reinforces a frustrating characterization of "art" and "science" as sets of aesthetics and tools.
I think we lose a lot when we forget that the core value of science is to learn things by following the scientific method. Art has harder to define value, but I think it's a mistake to put so much emphasis on valuing how mysterious and inscrutable someone's creative process is.
kip
in reply to Sam FM • •So you're thinking that there's a relationship between people using the word "science" all willy-nilly and people misguidedly glamorizing science? ("I fucking love science", "scientists say X")
Or some other issue?
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Ben Weinstein-Raun
in reply to kip • •I read Sam as saying something more like, "people understand each other fine when they say the phrase 'more art than science', but actually they have kind of wrong mental pictures about what it's like to actually do art or science, and this phrase typifies / reinforces that misunderstanding."
Art actually often requires exactly the kind of technical skill that people are referring to as "science" in this dichotomy: e.g. photography, sculpture, and painting all involve tons of technical aspects despite being ~central examples of art.
And science is in fact not centrally about its technicalness; it's about the process of learning, which in many central cases involves an intuitive stage followed by a technical stage (e.g. iiuc most physics and math starts as the inscrutable intuitions of a highly trained specialist, and only gets formalized as a way of shoring up and communicating the correctness and detail of that intuition).
I'm not sure about the specific problem Sam means to point to, but one issue I see actually feels related to your
... show moreI read Sam as saying something more like, "people understand each other fine when they say the phrase 'more art than science', but actually they have kind of wrong mental pictures about what it's like to actually do art or science, and this phrase typifies / reinforces that misunderstanding."
Art actually often requires exactly the kind of technical skill that people are referring to as "science" in this dichotomy: e.g. photography, sculpture, and painting all involve tons of technical aspects despite being ~central examples of art.
And science is in fact not centrally about its technicalness; it's about the process of learning, which in many central cases involves an intuitive stage followed by a technical stage (e.g. iiuc most physics and math starts as the inscrutable intuitions of a highly trained specialist, and only gets formalized as a way of shoring up and communicating the correctness and detail of that intuition).
I'm not sure about the specific problem Sam means to point to, but one issue I see actually feels related to your post yesterday about gender disparities: people will make wrong choices about what they want to do with their time and careers, and also what kinds of trust and expectations to afford institutions, if they have this kind of wrong mental picture of what those institutions are really like.
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Ben Weinstein-Raun
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Sam FM
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • •Yess. And like, most disciplines involve some combination of technical study + intuition. So you get all these cutesy claims like, "jazz improv is *actually* more of a science" just because it involves studying technical music structure. The next step is to get confused and judge jazz improv by the merit of it's technical complexity.
Side note here: when I was in art school, my professors were actually very dismissive of building technical skills. This was very frustrating for me at the time, and probably an overcorrection. But I think they were trying to push back against a tide of technical-but-meaningless artworks, and re-center expression/communication/interpretation as the core of what it is to participate in art.
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Sam FM
in reply to kip • •@kip yeah I think the misguided glamorization is pretty core to this thing. Pages like IFL Science feel like the result of treating science like an aesthetic, or putting the people in science jobs on a weird platform.
I see a similar thing happening with "rationality," being used more often to refer to "certain Berkeley weirdos" than "careful truthseeking." It's not hard to imagine a IFL Rationality page that just reposts ideas from "certified rationalists" that you are now expected to believe with 100% confidence and no skepticism.
kip
in reply to Sam FM • •like this
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Ben Weinstein-Raun
in reply to Sam FM • •Ben Weinstein-Raun
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • •Sam FM
in reply to Sam FM • •