If you look at the path that humanity has traveled, we can say that for the representative of homo sapiens, there were always three main tasks: to survive, to learn and to create. If the first questions do not arise at all, the rest require a small reservation.
From the very beginning, for survival, a person had to get acquainted with the reality surrounding him, perceive it, study, expand the boundaries of his own knowledge and comfort. Naturally, this required certain efforts - this is how the first tools of labor and hunting were created, so the cave paintings appeared, which became the starting point of creative potential.
Art and science are still closely linked, representing at the same time completely opposite, but to the extreme complementary things.
Specificity
Of course, researchers of art in all its manifestations and some physicists or programmers can tirelessly argue about the significance of these phenomena in human life. Nevertheless, art and science, paradoxically, are really closely connected, and sometimes they are a single, practically indivisible whole.
However, if we are talking about the characteristic features and significant differences, we should pay attention to aspects peculiar to only one of the considered phenomena. On the one hand, art is a real act of creativity, contact with something higher, unearthly, intangible. No wonder the ancient Greeks, who laid the foundation of modern civilization, considered poetry, music and theater one of the most important components of human life. Art and science are primarily distinguished, of course, by the accuracy and clarity of the tasks posed, and if in the first case we can talk about practically unlimited freedom, then in the case of science we often only have to dream about it.
Another difference between these components of human life can be considered their purpose. If art is aimed at creating, creating, approaching a deity, an absolute spirit, then the goal of science is most often cognition, analysis, determination of laws.
There is even an opinion according to which it is study that kills creativity and creation. Any analysis is always a kind of dissection, dividing into quotient in order to determine the mechanisms of work.
Finally, art and science differ in the degree of accessibility to man. If in the first case we are talking about a phenomenon that is characterized by synaesthesia, the highest degree of interaction with the thin strings of the human soul, then comprehension of science requires a certain level of training, knowledge, special thinking. Acts of creation are accessible to a greater or lesser extent to everyone, while it is simply impossible to become a space explorer or the creator of a nuclear bomb without years of training and conducting experiments.
Similarity
However, are they so different from each other, as it seems at first glance? Oddly enough, their similarity lies in the very opposition. Art is, as already mentioned, creation, the creation of something new, beautiful from the specific material at its disposal, whether it be plaster, sounds or paints.
But is the creation of something alien to science? Didn’t a man fly into space on a ship built thanks to a genius of engineering? Was not the first telescope invented in due time, thanks to which the infinity of stars was opened to the gaze? Wasn't the first whey made up of the ingredients at one time? It turns out that science is the same act of creation as what we used to call art.
One whole
Finally, we must not forget that in many ways these phenomena, concepts that make up our lives are not just similar, but almost identical. Take, for example, the treatise N. Boileau - the main manifesto of the era of classicism. On the one hand, this is a classic literary work. On the other - a scientific treatise in which the basic aesthetic principles of the time are explained, argued and compared.
Another example is the work of Leonardo da Vinci, who, in addition to paintings, designed aircraft in his drawings , studied human anatomy and physiology. In this case, it is quite difficult to determine whether it was art or a scientific activity.
Finally, we turn to poetry. At first glance, it is only correctly grouped words, which, thanks to rhyme, turn into an artistic text. However, how random is this order? How much effort does an author need to find him? What experience should he gain for this? It turns out that writing poetry is also a science.
Creators and scientists
So, when we have decided on the specifics of the problem, we turn to it a closer, more demanding look. People of science and art are often the same representatives of the human race. Dante Alighieri, for example, in addition to his obvious belonging to the literary world, can be ranked among outstanding historians. In order to realize this, you just need to read his "Divine Comedy."
Lomonosov, in turn, was successfully involved in chemistry and physics, but at the same time became famous as the author of numerous creations in the ode genre, as well as one of the legislators of Russian classicism.
The given examples are only a miser, a small fraction of the number of figures who combined both sides of this coin.
Special science
Needless to say, that not only physics and mathematics holds the world? There are a huge number of types of scientific activity that are far from exact methods of calculation, evaporation, or experiments in the field of plant compatibility.
The manifestations of art and the humanities can be considered extremely connected, practically inextricable . Millions of philologists, culturologists and psychologists have been working for centuries to understand not only the art itself, but also the world through its prism. By and large, the correct study of a literary work makes it possible to understand not only the peculiarities of its organization, but also the time at which it is written, to discover new sides in a person, to add his own, no less significant nuance to the existing picture of the world.
Reasoning and perception
Religion, philosophy, science, art are extremely closely interconnected. To prove this statement, we turn our attention to the Middle Ages. It was the church then that was the legislator of everything that happened in the earthly world. She defined the canons of art by limiting the subject, moving to a new level, where the physical did not matter.
How many heretical philosophers and scientists were then burnt at the bonfires of the Inquisition, how many were simply excommunicated for their own vision of the world or appeal to the form, volume in the image of the saint on the icon!
And at the same time, it was the church and religion that gave the world music, it was philosophy that became the basis for a huge number of novels, which are now classics of literature.
Art as divination
Ever since the days of Ancient Greece, there is a definition of an artist (in the broad sense of the word) as a medium, a coordinator between the heavenly and the earthly, divine and human. That is why the goddess of art and science is represented in mythology at once in nine forms. In this case, we are talking, of course, about muses that give inspiration to artists and researchers, chroniclers and singers. It was thanks to them that, according to myths, man was able to create beauty and look beyond the horizon into the incomprehensible and immense.
Thus, the creative person was practically endowed with a kind of clairvoyance. It should be noted that this point of view is by no means unfounded. Take, for example, the creator of the novel "20 thousand leagues under the sea." How could he know about technologies that will come true in years? Or the same Leonardo da Vinci, who predicted the movement of progress even before the rest of humanity thought about it ...
Prophecy and science
It will be erroneous to consider that only the artist is exposed to the unknown. In the world of scientific high thought of such examples, there are simply a huge number. The most famous of them can be called the periodic table, which the scientist dreamed of in the form of a deck of cards.
Or Gauss, who saw in a dream a snake biting his tail. It turns out that science is no less characteristic of openness to the unknown, otherworldly, subconscious, that artists with no less accuracy define on an intuitive level.
Common to all
Whatever you say, scientists and artists in their work serve one single, most important goal - to perfect the world. Each of them seeks to make our life more beautiful, simpler, cleaner, or rather, while choosing their own path, different from all others.