Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

This is the second (audio)book that’s suggested to me that science is not truth but is instead the imagination and thoughts of our time.

The first, by James Burke, focuses mainly on science and uses the history of scientific thought to demonstrate how scientific ideas do not stand on their own but change according to the understandings of each era. Chet Raymo’s work has a different goal. He wants scientists to acknowledge the benefits that the arts and humanities can bring to scientific work.

For him, the disconnect between modern scientific endeavors and the public at large is problematic. He believes poets, artists, and philosophers can help scientists humanize their sterile approaches and often hard-to-understand conclusions.

And since science is so much of the imagination, the arts will also help scientists be better at science.

The Virgin and the Mousetrap is a collection of essays on different topics. In each, Raymo links a scientific idea with an artist and his work. For example, one of the more successful essays talks about the stars and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. (And here’s the second Starry Night.)

Raymo wonders how our scientific history may be different if we were on a planet with full cloud cover and no visible stars. I find this thought fascinating. He says that humans had astronomy before they developed medicine. The stars fired the imaginations of early man and caused them to ask questions about what things are, how things work, and how humanity fits into it all.

Artists like Van Gogh bring their powers of observation and imagination into this tradition. Astronomers who have studied Van Gogh’s paintings find accurate portrayals of the skies in them. The scenes are not fictional ones.

We all know the connective power of The Starry Night. We also know that kids seem to automatically love these images when other artworks leave them unmoved. Raymo thinks if scientists could touch people with the actual magnificence, beauty, and wonder of the real stars, our attitudes towards science and scientific knowledge would improve.

Overall, his essays are a mixed bag. Some make better links between science and art than others. Still, as a liberal arts person interested in science, I appreciate his attempts to bridge the academic gap.

Audiobook Challenge status: eleven completed, one to go.

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