The Schism

Currency of Knowledge by ~VGAce on deviantART

There has been a schism between the arts and the sciences. While still held together in higher education as "Literature, Arts, & Sciences," this seems but a facade, a mere veil hiding the schism that divides the disciplines. Like two sides of a coin, the arts and the sciences no longer seem to see eye-to-eye. Yet at their core they still have the same goals: to seek out knowledge and discover truths.

So often it's a discussion of "the arts vs. the sciences," as if one is superior to the other in defining reality. But I wonder, why have we allowed the two to be divorced from one another? Why have we allowed this schism to take place? Are the arts naive? Do the sciences silence that sense of awe?

When I returned to my hometown for Thanksgiving, I took a moment to stand in the driveway of my house and look up at the clear night sky for the first time in perhaps months. In that moment, looking at the constellation Orion, I felt myself transported back in time. As a kid I had marveled at the stars. I had read about the myths and stories enshrouding the constellations, and seeing what people saw for thousands of years. I read about the composition of stars that made them burn, and about the incomprehensible distances that separate me from the heavens.

Does knowing about the science behind the stars make they any less remarkable? Any less awe-inspiring? To the contrary, it enhances that sense of wonder. I recounted this to Taylor and he told me how he had once went on a trip in northern Michigan. In the isolation of nature, far removed from the light pollution of cities, the world was illuminated solely by starlight on a moonless night. He saw the stars in their most primal splendor, dressed in their whites, reds, oranges, yellows, and blues. And he was at a loss for words to describe the beauty of the Milky Way as it cut its path across the night.

How can knowing the composition of the stars, reducing them to their elements and physics, possibly take anything away? Is not the knowledge that the same elements that created the stars are also responsible for creating the environment on Earth? With regards to the stars, what is their truth? That they can elicit wonder and an almost religious awe in people is a truth. That they, separated by distances unimaginable, burn in the vacuum of space with the same intensity as our sun is also a truth.

And a week ago I had a discussion with a few people (over wine and cheese) about the humanities and the sciences within medicine. That the humanities can teach us so much about people - our patients - is true. That the sciences make up the pillars of technology that now allow us to treat formerly terminal illnesses is also true. Can we not, then, marry the two for the betterment of the patient? Too often we utilize science in medicine "reduce" patients to a list of symptoms and their bodies to a machine to be managed and fixed. Perhaps we should take a moment to step back and just marvel at the science behind human body, and (in perhaps a twisted way) at the diseases that afflict us. Perhaps we should remember that patients are people.

It's unlikely to bridge the gap caused by the schism, it has gone on for far too long. But no matter how great the distances separate the arts from the sciences - even as far as between us and the stars - they cannot become fully divorced from one another. They are two sides of the same coin, and though they see the world in opposite directions like the Roman god, Janus, they both see the same things: knowledge, truth, and reality.

As written on the University of Michigan's seal, "Artes, Scientia, Veritas." Arts, Science, Truth.