SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION — GIBSON 179 



. . . the work of scientist and artist alike is the presentation of Form, Pattern, 

 Structure, in material or in mental images. For the work of either to fullill its 

 function it must be communicable; the hearer, reader, or beholder of the work 

 of art must in the end find coherence and feeling from the images aroused in 

 his own mind, and the verifier of the scientific theory must be able to reproduce 

 in his own mathematics and experiments the measurable facts communicated. 

 The most obvious divergence between art and science is that any number of 

 responding personalities to a work of art will find themselves creating any 

 number of differing emotional patterns : on the other hand, the numerical veri- 

 fication of a scientific theoi'y is unique, all the different scientific minds con- 

 verging upon identity. They invoke this identity as the only test that the 

 communication of the pattern of electrons or atoms or time and space measure- 

 ments is valid. The identity is possible because the subject of physical 

 science is confined to the measurable, whereas the subject of the arts is quali- 

 tative, not quantitative. With this distinction guarded, the physicist and the 

 imaginative artist might learn to see in one another the reflection each of 

 his own aim, discipline, and method. 



Aside from establishing a basis for interaction between two great 

 human activities, and thereby strengthening both, the foregoing 

 considerations have implications of great interest in science. In the 

 first place, they point up the need for a constant flow of imaginative 

 workers into the fields of basic and creative research. A liberal 

 education in school and college is the best vehicle we have today for 

 cultivating both imagination and powers of communication. A 

 feeling that the physical sciences are an integral part of human knowl- 

 edge and experience, and not the specialized preoccupation of a few 

 odd characters, promotes the formation of a climate in which imagi- 

 native men wish to devote their lives to research. This subject will 

 be discussed in more detail later. 



In the second place, these considerations suggest that quantitative 

 communicability of facts and patterns is a fundamental, if not the 

 fundamental, characteristic of science. Imagination enters into the 

 ordering of the facts into satisfyinig patterns or theories and in the 

 perception of the implications of the patterns but not into the inter- 

 pretations of the communications the listener receives from the author. 

 Results are valid scientifically only when they can be communicated 

 to any serious and intelligent listener, conveying to him a meaning 

 which is exactly that intended by the author — a quantitative descrip- 

 tion of experience that the listener can verify independently. The 

 scientist must have the power of exact expression — nowadays this 

 generally means a facility with mathematics, but this is not all; 

 the pattern he wishes to communicate must also be capable of exact 

 and unambiguous expression and interpretation. 



There are three further interesting implications of the require- 

 ment for exact and quantitative communicability in science: 



(1) It has placed severe limitations on the subjects available up to 

 now for scientific study. These subjects must be so simple that all 



