Extravagaria Workshop Wiki

ArtAndScienceWorkTheSame

One of the primary reasons to think that art and science are related is that people basically use the same sets of tools to do all their work, so that one would expect that by watching a scientist do real work we would see him or her doing exactly the same kinds of mental things an artist does.

Compare these two documents:

http:/www.dreamsongs.comExtravagaria/Mendeleev100.gif

http:/www.dreamsongs.comExtravagaria/Blake100.gif

On the left is one of the early drafts of Mendeleev's periodic tables. At the bottom you can see a list of elements in order of ascending atomic weights. You can see crossouts as he tried to place three particular elements.

On the right is the final draft of William Blake's "The Tyger." Again you see crossouts, and in particular the phrase "dread grasp" moving from place to place.

One might suppose that a scientists is a discoverer and a poet a creator. But these works-in-progress hint that both scientists and poets are explorers as well as inventors. The scientist Mendeleev had to play around with the periodic table-a human creation which looks at elements through a particular lens-to get it right, and the poet Blake had to do the same thing with his poem. Both scientists and poets would say that the material is directing them, that they are mere explorers in their own domains.