There is no doubt that academically differentiating between “science” and “letters” constitutes, in addition to a rough division, a way of condemning the majority of students to ignorance: those of letters and those of science. The true culture does not understand divisions (if any hierarchies or priorities), and a cultured individual has to aspire to be alphanumeric.
But that does not mean that science and art are the same thing, or even that they work the same way to gain knowledge (they don’t even provide the same kind of knowledge). Next, a list of fundamental differences between art and science that does not aspire to opt for one or the other, but not to confuse them when it comes to operating with them :
Although in its first steps, science and art are narrative artifacts in which the imagination prevails, in which segments that influence the entire construction are added and discarded. In this first moment, words and phrases are like equations and experiments. But then the story progresses and rushes towards an outcome, and that’s when art and science diverge.
In the outcome, a creative mind aspires to show a conclusive ending. But the scientist, although he also works as a poet up to this point, must finally work as an accountant: his conclusions are set out to be reviewed by equals, in the hope that other scientists accept his discoveries or locate errors in them.
Science grows both by the approval of peers and by the veracity of their technical statements, as explained by Edward Oliver Wilson told us in his book which is known by The Social Conquest of the Earth.
The conclusions will be checked repeatedly, and they have to be proven true. The data cannot be questionable, or theories fall apart. Mistakes discovered by others can cause a reputation to become aggravated. The punishment for fraud is nothing less than death (of reputation, and the possibility of moving forward with the race).
The exact date on which the process that led the human being to conceive creative arts is unknown. Makes 1.7 million years, the Homo erectus elaborated rough lyrical utensils, teardrop, which probably would be used to cut meat or plants. The process of conceiving science, however, is much more recent, and modern science began to forge in the 16th century.
But the biggest difference between art and science was established by philosopher Sydney Hook: “Raphael’s Madonna without Raphael, Beethoven’s sonatas and symphonies without Beethoven, are inconceivable. In science, on the other hand, most of the findings of a scientist could have been perfectly found by another scientist in the same field.”