Science, Technology and the Arts

In the book Consilience by Edward O. Wilson, two fundamental ways of knowing the world (i.e., creating knowledge) will emerge as the paradigms for the 21st Century: Science and the Arts. The Arts reveal truths about the human experience that can only be verified through such experience, but the arts also extend our vision of ourselves and expand the reality of what it is to be human.

Science produces knowledge, which can only be verified through external observation and internal verification through the exactness of mathematics. It is a knowledge that can be verified and reproduced by others, essentially establishing the reality of facts or the facts of reality.

Technology may be the magic elixir that enables these two great paradigms of knowledge making to intersect and exchange in ways we have not yet dreamed about. Technology is the enabler, extending our reach beyond the limits of imagination, empowering us in wondrous ways. But we should also note with caution that sometimes technique can overpower and replace content. Sometimes it is difficult to know the difference between technical achievement so dazzling we cannot see there is no substance.

In music, technique has been the grand interpreter of excellence. Acquiring technique has required incredible effort and achievement has been hard won and often long-suffering. What many object to in the new technology is that beginners are empowered with the expressive range almost the equivalent of masters. Such mastery comes too easily, and the outcome is still in question, at least inviting new inquiry and review.

But perhaps we need patience to understand that such replicas of achievement are not new emerging masterworks. They are really the relics and artifacts of the past in new clothing. The new technologies and processes are busily assimilating and digesting the content of the past, and we have yet to see the emergence of a true mastery of the new techniques, the new technologies. We are too easily led astray by the glib constructs of technical prowess. New master artists will emerge when completely new paradigms of understanding and expression are uncovered in new probings of the human condition.