concepts of order in the natural sciences and in the visual fine arts

Leonardo

Concepts of Order in the Natural Sciences and in the Visual Fine ArtsAuthor(s): Harold OsborneSource: Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 290-294Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574603 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 290-294, 1981 Printed in Great Britain

0024-094X/81 /040290-05$02.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.

CONCEPTS OF ORDER IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES AND IN THE VISUAL FINE ARTS*

Harold Osborne** Abstract - The article is concerned with the fine rather than the applied arts and with the pure or basic rather than the applied natural sciences. These are activities that find their goal in the activity itself: In the one case, it is the satisfaction provided by the cultivation ofaesthetic apprehension, in the other, the satisfaction of understanding ofnaturefor its own sake. Both kinds of activity are in pursuit of order. The order that is the object of the sciences consists in the system of regularities discovered in the external world. The order of the visualfine arts is an inner order provided by artistsfor aesthetic enjoyment by others. The article compares these two types of order in some detail.

I. In January 1951 the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, organized an exhibition on Growth and Form, and from this emerged a symposium of 11 papers, which were published in book form under the title Aspects of Form [1]. The editor, Lancelot Law Whyte, described the theme of the symposium as 'the realisation of unity of spatial form in the complex processes of physics, biology, psychology, and art'. One may think that perhaps the venture set its sights needlessly low in restricting the theme to spatial form. Nonetheless, it was an important anticipation of later attempts to achieve a combined understanding of the concept of order, in the sense of organization, by bringing together insights from both science and visual art. In pursuing this undertaking I believe one cannot do better than to ponder the following words from the editor's Introduction to the book: 'There are dangers in the collaboration of scientist and artist, for superficial analogies between science and art are harmful to both. Yet the scientist's study of spatial forms and the artist's creation of them are both human activities, and we can find a common root if we look deep enough. [. ..] The divergencies of the two attitudes can only be validly overcome in one way: by a broadened understanding of the importance of form in all realms, not only in the external world but also in the unconscious roots of all human activities. Indeed we may discover that there is nothing wholly formless in nature, that if there were it could never be known to man, and that every

*A summary of this article appears in Leonardo 14, 148 (1981). **British aesthetician, 12 Kreutzstrasse, 8640 Rapperswil SG,

SG, Switzerland. (Received 26 June 1980)

particular form has its own special significance within the uiniversal significance of which man is part.'

In this paper I am interested in the basic or'pure' rather than the applied natural sciences and in the fine rather than the applied arts. Both natural science and visual art are domains of human activity which are not pursued for the practical results to which they might contribute and are not justified by reference to these. Of course, most disinterested scientists do sometimes provide important results in the practical sphere and, from time immemorial, fine art has been used for ideological indoctrina- tion, for the glorification of the living and the dead, for the perpetuation of history and tradition and for many other extrinsic purposes. But, in principle, basic scientists are motivated by the human urge to seek new knowledge for its own sake, fine artists by the impulse to provide and enjoy visual material for the expansion of aesthetic experience. These are not indeed the sole or main conscious motives of those individuals who occupy themselves with these domains. Nor indeed, is it easy to draw a clear line between basic and applied science and between fine and applied art. But the distinction is both necessary and, I think, valid. Ultimately, the satisfactions that are offered by basic science and by fine art are intrinsic, not practical. These are human values by which the continued existence of these two domains are sustained. I believe it is the continued, if dwindling, respect for these values, even by many persons who do not understand what is involved, that enables art and science to survive in the materialistic and pragmatic societies of today.

Cultural activities and values emerge in a human society when its members master their environment to a point where time and energy are released for the cultivation of faculties that originally evolved in the struggle for survival of the species. Their partial liberation from the pressures of practical necessity

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also liberates impulses to exercise them for their own sake independently of practical application. When faculties are so exercised, a high value, sometimes called a 'spiritual value', is ascribed to this exercise. I am not here concerned with a metaphysical doctrine of values but draw attention to the fact that this does, in fact, occur in human societies.

Two faculties are most important for my present enquiry. The one is rational understanding, whose liberation from practical necessity made possible the emergence of philosophy, mathematics, logic and basic science. The other is direct perceptive awareness, which is the source of one's cognitive commerce with the environment and oneself. It includes the direct apprehension (but not the theoretical analysis) of an intellectual thing such as a mathematical formula or a scientific law. The exercise and expansion of this faculty for its own sake takes one to the core of what is meant by the much abused term aesthetic.

Understanding consists in the discovery of such regularities in the environment as enable one to predict the recurrence of situations and the behaviour of things. One says that one understands something when one believes that one can incorporate it within a system of ordered regularities. In its elementary manifestations the search for order is an essential attribute of life at its various levels, far below the emergence of consciousness; even the most elementary forms of life are permeated with an inborn propensity to seek regularities. The superiority of human beings lies in their higher degree of flexi- bility, the less restricted character of their curiosity and their broader sense of relevance. Some insects and bacteria developed to a sharper acuteness the abilities to detect and respond to regularities within more circumscribed environments, achieving complex, successful and beautiful systems of adaptation. Human beings accepted no limits to the scope of understanding, extending curiosity to embrace the totality of the cosmos; this was the origin of philosophy and science.

II. The postulation of a system of regularities is

equivalent to the postulation of organization or order and, as Joseph Needham said in Aspects of Form: 'Perhaps we might characterise the only two components required for the understanding of the universe in terms of modern science as Organisation on the one hand and Energy on the other' [1, p. 97]. The aim of scientists is to formulate this organization in intellectually apprehensible laws of nature. For, in the words of Karl Popper, scientific laws are statements asserting regularities or constantly conjoined kinds of events. They are supported, and sometimes suggested, by repeated observations that things of a certain kind are in fact regularly

conjoined with things of another kind. But scientific theories are not derived solely from repeated observations. They may be large imaginative assertions of order and regularity going beyond observed experience, sometimes going beyond the possibility of observed experience. Science in the latter sense began in 2500 B.P. (years before the present) with the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor. Typical were the hypotheses of Thales that the Earth is supported by water, on which it rides as a ship, and of his follower Anaximander, who declared that the Earth 'is upheld by nothing but remains stationary owing to the fact that it is equally distant from all other things'-an idea that was described by Popper as 'one of the boldest, most revolutionary and most portentous ideas in the whole history of human thought'. But this was not yet the science of the last 400 years. Such hypotheses could not be confirmed or refuted by experience and observation. What is called modern science was made possible by the revival of the belief in human fallibility, for which Nicolas of Cusa and Erasmus of Rotterdam were largely responsible. Its prophet was Francis Bacon.

Theories of this 'modern science' are indeed 'large imaginative assertions of order and regularity going beyond observed experience'-but not beyond the possibility of observed experience. Hypotheses are now regarded as tentative and conjectural, intended to be tested by experiment in order to be verified or refuted. Therefore they must not only provide an imaginatively satisfying picture of reality, but they must allow one to deduce observations over a wide field so that experiments can be devised to corroborate or invalidate the hypothesis. Theories are expected to offer explanations of the experience of natural phenomena and events, in so far as correct observations can be predicted from the theories.

As science aspires to knowledge, so it has been said fine art is linked with the cultivation and expansion of direct perception for its own sake, not for the furtherance of life or the promotion of understanding. Of course, perceptual awareness is also essential to science. Logically and in practice, direct awareness is prior to understanding. Percep- tion precedes understanding, for what is perceived is what needs to be understood. Perception is required in order to test and verify the generalizations of scientific laws, and, for this purpose, science has extended human capacities by the invention of the microscope, the telescope, the spectroscope, etc. But scientific perception is very different from the kind of perception cultivated in aesthetic experience. In practical life one normally perceives in order to classify and compare, and this is the sort of observation that science develops. Scientific laws deal with regularly conjoined kinds of events, and imply that things and events were perceived and discriminated into kinds. The prior (if unconscious) activity of discriminatory percipience is implied in the very possibility of formulating order and regularity. It involves abstraction from the totality

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of sensory input, in the sense of segregating what is essential from what is irrelevant, the purpose being to assign each percept to a class or group or kind, the members of which are regarded as indistinguishable for scientific generalizations. But this kind of classificatory perception is repugnant to aesthetic experience, where each perception is considered unique, although it is essential to science and to human survival in nature. On the other hand, the kind of observation to which science aspires is not of prime importance in the arts. I therefore turn now to the more difficult task of describing aesthetic awareness.

Sometimes, with the urge to understand tem- porarily in abeyance, one rests, as it were, in a perception, perhaps rendering it more keen and acute, perhaps more complete, not for practical purposes but for the sake of the perception itself. Contemplation is intensified for its own sake. When this takes place, one is said to be taking up an aesthetic attitude. It may be either the scent or the shape of a flower, the colours of a rainbow, the characteristic form of a tree, the posture or the movement of an animal, the rippling of water or the sound of wind-one can take up an aesthetic attitude towards anything. But only some things are capable of sustaining attention in this attitude. For the most part, aesthetic interest is fleeting and quickly lapses. One begins, instead, to classify and dissect, to compare and rationalize, to understand, or else interest lapses altogether. The things that are capable of sustaining and expanding contemplation in the aesthetic mode without the intrusion of discursive thinking, are the proper things of aesthetic awareness, enlivening percipience with a sense of heightened emotion. The most prominent of these things are artefacts: they are those that are called artworks. An artwork is an artefact that is appropriate for evoking and enhanc- ing contemplation in the aesthetic mode. Scientific theories and the regularities of nature are also capable of evoking the sort of aesthetic response that is evoked by artworks.

It has been found that artworks are characterized by a kind of inner order that is sometimes called 'organic unity'. Since the time of Francis Hutcheson, this has been loosely described as a combination of unity and diversity. Unity is necessary for contemplation in the aesthetic mode to be maintained; other- wise discursive analysis takes over, relating the parts in understanding. Diversity is needed to sustain attention. The inner order which is the proper object of aesthetic awareness is not, in my view, susceptible in principle to scientific analysis. This does not mean that in aesthetic apprehension one contemplates merely a vague and inchoate 'something'. As contemplation is intensified and repeated, increasing richness and complexity of internal differentiation can be discriminated, new relations and inter-relations can emerge. But I believe it is a different sort of complexity from the kind that can be scientifically analyzed and described, and attention is differently directed.

In aesthetic apprehension attention is typically, but not exclusively, directed on aspects of things that are commonly called aesthetic properties such as gracefulness, elegance, clumsiness, dignity, sol- emnity, etc. These properties have often been ostensively described, depicted and elaborated in literary terms; but I do not think they are either measurable or systematically classifiable and so lie outside the purview of science. They are dependent on physical properties but are not deducible from them, rather, they are emergent or field properties. In other words, they characterize certain 'wholes' but not the separate parts from which the wholes are made up, and they cannot be inferred by any known principles from the parts of the wholes that they characterize or from the relations among the parts; they do not lend themselves to systematic classification. Although they are as 'objective' as the physical properties of things, the capacity to apprehend them (called sensibility) is highly variable from person to person and it can be cultivated and trained.

Artworks, aesthetically the most potent objects known, are systems of aesthetic properties that 'emerge' at different levels, often in an extremely complex hierarchy, the whole forming a unity in the sense that it (as well as the contained parts and levels) is characterized by overall aesthetic properties. Each artwork is unique. It is not possible to generalize the aesthetic characteristics of artworks for the purpose of aesthetic appraisals or of beauty judgements as physical properties are generalized. Aesthetic properties obtain their specific character from the context in which they occur. The names (and languages have few names for them) are rough and ready generalizations that have only slight applicability. Because elegance (or any other named aesthetic property) contributes positively to the aesthetic value of a particular artwork, it does not follow that the same aesthetic quality will contribute positively to other works. In some works elegance may be out of place and a blemish. The aesthetic value of an artwork (or any other aesthetic object) does not consist in the number or the kind of aesthetic (or physical) properties that it manifests. The aesthetic value consists in the unity (called organic unity) introduced by the system of emergent properties held together by emergent, overall aesthetic properties of the whole.

The reason aesthetic value is identified with unities of this kind is not arbitrary. For without unity of the sort that can be grasped in immediate perception through hierarchically emergent perceptual properties, unified awareness of the object lapses. In its place viewers apprehend an object as a system of parts related discursively in understanding. They are not directly aware of the whole as a whole; instead they infer it as a whole. It is only a whole of the sort described that can be directly apprehended as a whole and that, given adequate variety, can exercise and extend one's faculties of direct awareness to the limit.

I shall now summarize and attempt a comparison

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of the two types of order that are the objects of science and of fine art respectively.

Scientists seek the satisfaction of rational understanding exercised for its own sake and stimulated by curiosity. Its aim is knowledge. Art seeks the satisfaction of the more fundamental faculty of direct awareness exercised and extended for its own sake. Both have their goal in the apprehension of order, an order that is discovered and apprehended objectively, not imposed by the human mind. But the systematic order of science and the 'inner' order that is the object of aesthetic awareness are, at first sight, so different that one is impelled to wonder what useful purpose is served by attempts to bring them under one concept. To clarify this is presum- ably the main purpose of any discussion of scientific and of artistic order. I shall first summarize what I consider to be the outstanding features of the two types of order.

Natural order involves the following concepts: (1) Predictability. It is by their capacity to make predictions that scientific theories are tested. Nature is envisaged as consisting of things and events organized in such a way that from what has occurred before it is possible to establish laws by means of which it is possible to predict what will occur again. Scientists find such a law-bound universe by neglecting aspects such as aesthetic qualities, which do not lend themselve to this kind of organization. (2) But predictable repetition presupposes the logically prior concept of classifiability. The idea of repetition applies only after things and events have been classified into kinds, each kind consisting of items indistinguishable from one another for the purpose in hand. This excludes aesthetic aspects of reality from science. (3) Tied in with classifiability is the concept of measurability, which implies that the items of a scientific kind can be broken down into parts that at the macroscopic level are, in principle, commensurable.

In the aesthetics, in contrast, repeatability and, therefore, predictability are excluded. In aesthetic appreciation attention is directed upon the unique present experienced as an unanalyzed whole, on things as individuals, prohibiting classification into kinds. Each aesthetic object, each occurrence of an aesthetic property, is unique and individual in experience. The objects of aesthetic attention cannot be reduced to indistinguishable units and equivalents, and, therefore, measurability is excluded. (Attempts to introduce concepts of measurability into aesthetics, such as those of George Birkhoffs Aesthetic Measure [2], seem to me plausible only in so far as some aspect of human response (or statistical measurements of response) is concerned. As soon as an object is seen as a collection of measurable unitary parts, it ceases to be a possible object of aesthetic contemplation. Aesthetic objects, I am convinced, cannot be classified. (Of course, art historians make it their work to do just this. But they do it for the purpose of understanding something about artworks and their production, not for aesthetic appreciation, and, to

the extent that understanding is brought to bear, an object ceases to be an aesthetic object. Atrophy of appreciative power is the most familiar occupational hazard among art historians.) The above leads me to the conclusion that there can be no laws and no principles in aesthetics by means of which new artworks can be constructed or existing works aesthetically appraised. From the aesthetic constitution of one artwork it is not possible to generalize about the aesthetic constitution of others.

While there is beauty in nature, open and accessible to contemplation by anyone, and the diverse kinds of order in nature, discovered and described by scientists, may also be evocative of aesthetic response, the most powerfully effective objects for the evocation and expansion of aesthetic experience are artworks made by artists for the enjoyment of others. Scientists, on the contrary, discover but do not make the order that occurs in nature. But the statements they make about order may themselves have intellectual beauty. Laws of nature, theorems and formulae are mental products that may exercise aesthetic appeal akin to that exercised by masterpieces of fine art. S. Chandra- sekhar compares his response to a formula of the Indian mathematician Ramanujan with his feelings before Michelangelo's statues 'Day', 'Night', 'Even- ing' and 'Dawn' [3, 4]. Many scientists have spoken in a similar vein and have testified to the force exerted by the feeling for beauty in the development of their theories. Chandrasekhar tried to analyze the character of scientific intellectual beauty with Einstein's general theory of relativity as his main example. He finds two constituents: Francis Bacon's 'some strangeness in the proportion' (which he interprets as meaning 'exceptional to a degree that excites wonder and surprise') and Heisenberg's 'the proper conformity of the parts to one another and to the whole'. There is some similarity with the formulation of Francis Hutcheson referred to above.

So powerful has often been the influence of aesthetic considerations in the formulation of scientific theories that it has sometimes been claimed, even by some scientists, that intellectual beauty is an aim and a criterion in science. This is, I am sure, incorrect. The aim of science is knowledge. Aesthetic considerations may have an important role in the invention and formulation of a theory, but play no role in its confirmation or its falsifica- tion. As G. J. Whitrow has said in correspondence with me [4]: 'Kepler's theory that the solar system is based on an interconnected set of regular solids associated with the orbits of the planets was surely a beautiful idea, but it has been no part of astro- nomical science as we have understood it in the past four centuries.'

In art, aesthetic considerations are an end in themselves. They are the aim and the criterion. In science they are at most a means to an end. Nevertheless, the important role played by aesthetic considerations in the development of scientific theory may serve as a pointer to enable stronger

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minds than mine to find the lacking link between the natural order for which scientists search and the inner order that is the aim of the visual artists.

REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. L. W. Whyte, ed., Aspects of Form (London: Lund

Humphries, 1951).

2. G. D. Birkhoff, Aesthetic Measure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).

3. S. Chandrasekhar, Beauty and the Quest for Beauty in Science, Physics Today, p. 25 (July 1979).

4. I am indebted to Gerald J. Whitrow of Imperial College, London, for reading a draft of this paper and for many suggestions and corrections. I am also indebted to him for bringing my attention to Ref. 3.

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