About

Ralph Windle’s Blog on Science & The Arts

is about some big, interconnected issues:-

The long-running Arts / Science / Two cultures Debate. Why the old clichés have to STOP...

How Creative Synthesis - the bringing together of separated (Arts/Science?) modes of thought is now top-priority for Innovation...

About Ralph Windle

ARTS/SCIENCE ‘ENCOUNTERS’: a Review

IV      RESPONSES

‘If you don´t know where you´re going, any road will get you there´.
Lewis Carroll

And so it was that we entered the twenty-first century with a bold reaffirmation of desire – to close the Arts/Science gap - but with an educational and resource system not yet in gear with the need. And yet the ambition alone, now more robustly articulated, was itself enough to begin reviving some deep sensitivities and yearnings for change among thinking professionals in schools and universities, across `arts´ and `sciences´, and-increasingly- a wider public.

Since curriculum change and course design is an inevitably slow process, the more visible early signs of change have come from an enterprising series of exploratory events and interdisciplinary projects in various parts of the university sector over the past dozen years. They have been surprisingly under-researched but remain a rich potential source of learning on the way to some more systematic strategy for arts/science interaction.
One of the best known, and among the quickest off the blocks, was the St Andrew’s University `Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science´ project (2000, leading to the 2006 OUP publication of that title, edited by Robert Crawford).

Its purpose was `to explore what poetry and science share as kinds of discovery…´and brought together 9 pairs of scientists and poets to lunch and discuss their work’ …the scientists were each to bring to the lunch a`provocative object´ relating to their work… Afterwards the poet wrote a poem directly or tangentially related to this experience. The scientist then read this, and produced a one page response to the poem and the project´ …..

It would be difficult to disagree with Crawford´s own conjecture, in the book’s introduction, that `The project of this book may sound contrived, or at least eccentric..´ And since the 9 `pairings´ read like a distinguished short-list of candidates for Nobel Prizes in Literature and/or Science, it would be hard to imagine any of them having less than a mutually stimulating lunch and interchange; so it would be churlish not to applaud their good fortune.

However, the project’s significance for the rest of us is a good deal less clear.
It also needs to be said that the excellence of the book itself owes less to these dialogues
than to the brilliant free-standing essays by several people not thus involved; most notably

Simon Armitage’s `Modelling the Universe: Poetry, Science and the Art of Metaphor’;
Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s `Astronomy and Poetry´; and a cutting polemic by scientist/poet-
Miroslav Holub’s `Rampage, or Science in Poetry´ .

These, and Crawford´s own comments, made the book well worth the asking price and brought new quality to the arts/science dialogue. Yet this approach to methodology was more a brave experiment and booster for the cause , rather than a viable model for others.

Many of these early arts/science projects were influenced, and often sponsored by, the Welcome Trust and Sci- Art Consortium. ‘Experiment: Conversations in art and science ‘ edited by Bergit Arends and Davina Thackara 2003, showcased a number of these ground-breaking projects (2000 to 2002 ) where scientists and artists had worked together. In the book they describe their aspirations for the projects and the work behind them.

The result is a series of `thought-provoking essays and evocative imagery illustrating an array of projects representing subjects as diverse as marine biology, infectious diseases, surgical procedures, inaudible sound, cognitive behavioural therapy and time-space awareness in young people with disabilities´. They reflect, of course, those areas of the medical and biological sciences, with their increasingly wider creative alliances, which have been the beneficiaries of the Welcome Trust’s support.

These early initiatives have encouraged the development of a variety of arts/science networks embracing many researchers in the university sector; and leading to contemporary projects like the Welcome Trust’s `The Identity Project´, a season of exhibitions, events and experiments across the UK. Actress Fiona Shaw’s much publicised `brain scan´ while reciting TS Eliot’s The Waste Land under the scrutiny of cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists at  London University is part of this high profile project.

And the CSI´s `appeal´ to respond to the arts/science need has produced a growing number of internal university responses , even though their more traditional disciplinary faculty and research structures, plus over –specialised curricula, remain major impediments.

The most powerful impetus towards change in arts/science interactions has come from more fundamental changes in the core disciplines themselves, under the unprecedented seismic shifts brought on by the Human Genome Project and the expanding influence of the neurosciences.  Structures, policies and curricula may still delay, but are losing their former power to prevent, an exhilarating convergence of `arts´ and `science´ before these deeper, more holistic, explorations of genetics, brain sciences and the very sources of cognitive learning and creativity.
By the beginning of the Year of Darwin (2009) more than a dozen UK universities had made noticeable entries into the field, employing some very inventive `meta-structures´ to cope with the lingering `traditional structures´ beneath. The `Institute´ or `Centre´ was the most ubiquitous device; and a strong presence in the neurosciences the most frequent nucleus for interdisciplinary growth.
So, for instance, the University of Newcastle was able to bring together three of its interdisciplinary institutes, its Institute of Neuroscience; its Newcastle Institute for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (NIASSH); and its Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Institute (PEALS); to mount a vigorous entry at what it calls The Arts/Science Interface. This, with its particular interests in the emerging Medical Humanities field, have added substance to its credibility in several related inter-disciplinary research fields; and deepened its support from The Welcome Trust, starting with the establishment of the Henry Wellcome Centre for Neuroecology at the university in 2002.
NIASSH is also home to the £4m `Culture Lab´ developed `through and for cross-faculty and interdisciplinary collaboration´.
The Universities of Oxford (Oxford Cognitive Neurosciences and Education Forum) and Bristol (Dana Foundation/Department of Neuroscience) are two other universities which are building out from the neurosciences discipline; but the latter (Bristol) have combined this with an extra-mural association with the London based University of the Arts, supporting a BSc Honours Degree in Arts Education.

Some are finding that a significant presence in the `social´ sciences can be extended to include the `natural´ sciences. It is noticeable, for instance, that the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (NIASSH) now strays regularly into the wider Arts/Science territories.
And there are other, more idiosyncratic, approaches. In the wake of the St Andrew’s project ( above) the University of Liverpool has established its Centre for Poetry and Science `to provide new poetry, commentary, essays and interviews with leading poets and scientists´. Poets and scientists in the universities of Liverpool and Cardiff are also participating in discussions with each other and creating an online diary of their thoughts.