DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

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Vol. II, No. 21. SEPTEMBER 1921. 



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DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

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Editorial Notes 



The question of the relations between art and science 

 has recentl}' been revived in the Press and amongst 

 many groups of thinkers. So far as the Press is con- 

 cerned, this has been partly due to Viscotmt Haldane's ' 

 consideration of the meaning of Reality as apphed to 

 art and its meaning as applied to science. With 

 Viscount Haldane's subtle distinctions and definitions 

 we do not intend to concern ourselves here. What 

 \vc do intend to express in these notes is a more practical 

 attitude to the whole subject — an attitude which regards 

 art and science as supremely important one to the other, 

 and as incomplete one without the other. It is an 

 unfortunate fact that many so-called educated people of 

 to-day assume one of these two mistaken views : 

 (a) that the growth of science is harmful to art, and 

 is, therefore, a danger to civilisation, or (b) that these 

 are the days of science, and that art is out-of-date, 

 inefficient, and useless. Put so bluntly as this, these 

 notions seem absurd, but they are in varying degree 

 held by a number of people, and, should you discuss 

 1 Tlie Reign of Relativity. (See list of Boohs Received.) 



art and science with many men of moderately able 

 intelligence, you will almost certainly find that one or 

 other of these two biasses lies at the back of their minds. 



The first belief is a comparatively harmless one, 

 for nothing can now stem the progress of science ; it 

 is an essential part of our civilisation ; moreover, 

 it is easy to prove historically that science, far from driv- 

 ing art into the background, has often lent it inspiration. 

 We need only mention the discoveries of Copernicus 

 and Gahleo, which quite definitely played a part in 

 effecting the Renaissance of European art and litera- 

 ture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the 

 great movements in English art and literature during 

 the Victorian era, when science began to make such 

 rapid strides forward, in order to prove our point. 

 But the second bias is far more general and far more 

 insidiously dangerous. In an age of science and 

 mechanical invention such as ours, it is easy to relegate 

 art to the background as something possibly pleasant, 

 but undoubtedly useless. Such an attitude is dan- 

 gerous not only to art, but to science itself, for art 

 in the wider sense is still the life-blood of science. 

 Nearly a hundred years ago one of the greatest of all 

 lyric poets ^ wrote these words : 



* * ♦ * * 



" It exceeds all imagination to conceive what 

 would have been the moral condition of the world 

 if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shake- 

 speare, Calderon, Bacon, nor Milton had ever existed ; 

 if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been bom ; 

 if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated ; if 

 a revival of the study of Greek literature had never 

 taken place ; if no monuments of ancient sculpture 

 had been handed down to us ; and if the poetry of the 

 religion of the ancient world had been extinguished, 

 together with its belief. The human mind could never, 

 except by the intervention of these excitements, have 

 been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciences, 

 and that application of analytical reasoning to the 



2 Shelley in A Defence of Poetry. 



221 



