In “The Future of Science. . . Is Art?” by Jonah Lehrer, he describes how art and science should articulate with each other. There is a cultural divide that is stopping science and art from working together. Humans are so interested in art because it shows experience. Science is data based and more “boring.” Science has stopped making progress and needs new methods, maybe art could help. Art is a very creative thing and can be seen in different ways by different people. Science is more fact and evidence based and isn’t always understood by everyone. Science has actually even “progressed beyond our ability to understand it. . .” (Lehrer). Metaphors are used often in science to make things more understandable. Art can do so many things to help science progress, such as create interesting questions, build metaphors or see the correlation between body and emotion. Novelists can test new theories through their writing and painters can help us to understand the visual cortex. Art and science need to create a positive feedback loop, to benefit each other. Art and science will impact each other they just need to start working together in order to see the positive benefits.

I thought that this reading was very interesting and shed a lot of light on how art and science work together. I never really think about how art and science could articulate but after reading this article, I realized that art and science really do benefit each other. Art and science are very different from each other, but I think that those differences is what science needs to keep progressing. So many people would rather look at art than science because art is up for interpretation whereas science is so precise and can only be understood in certain ways. Scientists seem to be stuck in a “bubble” and don’t want anything in the “bubble” to change. Without change science is going to be at a standstill with no progress. Science really does need art.

Synapse: a junction between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter.

Epiphenomenon: a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process.

Holistic Perspective: many different factors are taken into account to generate a picture of the culture as a whole.