172 SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



piers, thin walls, large stained glass windows, flying buttresses, 

 etc. Also, Wolfflin's definition of Baroque as painterly, recessional, 

 open, with "unified unity" and relative clearness.' 56 Professor 

 Munro goes on to specify in great detail the various facts, distinc- 

 tions, and concepts which are usually considered relevant to the 

 analysis of a style in art. Emphasis is placed on the complexities of 

 the problem, and, concerning the scientific goal of isolating or 

 abstracting a pure type, he writes: 'This is often debatable' 57 — 

 since artists are freer, and more wilful, than nature. Nevertheless: 

 'Some traits are usually regarded as basic and essential to the 

 style, involving many other traits and determining their distinctive 

 mode of interrelation. (E.g., "painterly" in Wolfl^in's theory of 

 Baroque.) '58 



Dangers and virtues, similar to those that accompany abstrac- 

 tion in science, are also encountered in aesthetic theory and 

 criticism. Bergson's complaint of loss of reality is the reason why 

 each generation has to develop a 'new criticism' to correct what 

 it considers to have been the theoretical errors and aesthetic 

 bhnd-spots of its predecessors. Dewey's complaint of loss of 

 practicality is less obvious, since, as Kant pointed out, art is charac- 

 terized by 'purposiveness without purpose'. However, if we 

 recognize the social role of art as an expression and instrument of 

 culture, critical abstractions which have ceased to be meaningful 

 may lead to a breakdown of the important function of communica- 

 tion: m a new cultural context, one generation's Romanticism 

 becomes another generation's Naturalism. 



Like those of a scientist, a critic's theoretical tools must be 

 'appropriate' and 'clear'. Just as inappropriate and inadequate 

 concepts have stifled the progress of science, so, in the hands of 

 insensitive critics, they have frequently prevented appreciation 

 of great art; an obvious example is the abuse of neo-classic rules, 

 which prevented full appreciation of Shakespeare by Frenchmen 

 like Voltaire in the eighteenth century. And recognition of the 

 role of ambiguity in poetry should not lead to ambiguity in 

 criticism; one should be clear, so to speak, in one's understanding 

 of obscurity (as in the critical essays of Yvor Winters). 



Similarly, abstraction is as necessary for the critic as for the 

 scientist. The former, too, begins with many concrete individuals 

 (poems, paintings, statues); with reading, looking, and feeling; 

 and with gross descriptions, such as: this is the tragedy of a king 

 who unwittingly killed his father and committed incest with his 



