Althoug I had a very pretty bad english, gonna try to come out my
oppinion.
donald cunningham wrote:
>
> There is a very nice piece in the July 11 Chronicle
> of Higher Education that relates to the discussion of
> artifact. Here are the first few paragraphs:
> **********
>
> For the Sake of Science, the Arts Deserve Support
>
> By Robert S. Root-Bernstein
>
> The sciences and the arts too often are considered to be
> polar opposites.
They could be considered as different aspects of the same knowledge.
The sciences are supposed to be objective,
> intellectual, analytical, reproducible, and useful; the arts are
> thought to be subjective, sensual, empathic, unique, and
> frivolous.
This maniqueism only keeps unclear an dialetic approach of them
In the competition between the two for
> dominance in modern society,
Is there a competition indeed between them?
the arts have clearly lost: U.S.
> support for all of the arts combined is less than what any
> singlescientific or technological discipline receives. The
> current attempts by members of Congress to
> eliminate support for the National Endowment for the Arts
> underscore this point.
The power of the Arts on changing things and ways of beeing
scares...
>
> Yet many scientists employ the arts as scientific tools.
> Moreover, various artistic insights have actually preceded
> and made possible subsequent scientific discoveries. The arts
> thus can stimulate scientific progress, and we dismiss them
> at our peril.
I believe the Arts are tools for communication.
>
> History shows that the sciences and technology have never
> flourished in the absence of a similar flourishing of the arts.
Sciences,technology and the Arts are procuced in a specific social,
cultural and historic space and time.
> The reasons for this connectedness have become apparent in
> the past several decades, as a result of studies by historians
> of science and technology, psychologists, and other scholars
> who study creativity.
Those studies, I think, received much influence of Herbart"s thinking
A consensus is emerging that scientists
> and engineers need skills associated with, and often learned
> from, the arts.
>
> These skills include the abilities to observe acutely; to think
> spatially (what does an object look like when I rotate it in
> my mind?) and kinesthetically (how does it move?); to
> identify the essential components of a complex whole; to
> recognize and invent patterns (the "rules" governing a
> system); to gain what the Nobelist Barbara McClintock
> called "a feeling for the organism" -- empathy with the
> objects of study; and to synthesize and communicate the results of one's
> thinking visually, verbally, or mathematically.
>
> Such skills or tools for thinking are not learned within the
> standard science curriculum but almost exclusively through
> the practice of the arts,
There's an other conception of the objectives for teaching the Arts that
calls the attention to the fact they are a kind of knowledge "per si".
including music and writing. Several
> recent studies of very successful scientists and engineers --
> including research by Robert Milgram of Tel Aviv
> University, Suzanne Merritt of the Polaroid Corporation,
> Leonard Humphreys and his colleagues at the University of
> Iowa, and my own work with colleagues at the University of
> California at Los Angeles -- have shown that active
> participation and demonstrated ability in one or more of the
> arts are far more predictive of success in science than
> standard measures such as I.Q.
Don't you believe the abilities can be learned?
, scores on tests such as the
> SAT, or academic degrees.
>
> Don Cunningham
> School of Education
> Indiana University
> Bloomington, IN 47405
>
> 812-856-8525
> cunningh who-is-at indiana.edu
>
> "We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities"
>
> Pogo, aka Walt Kelly