The Imagination Equation

I used to say that I hate contemporary art — which is interesting, given that I absolutely love contemporary dance. Like, yes queen. Show me a 3-minute piece where all your bodily movements somehow represent the colour green — What I mean is that I used to hate the type of contemporary art that makes you say: “hmm, I can do that.” I would quietly dismiss it, and I did not think it was impressive. I just couldn’t understand the appeal to an almost blank canvas with just a few coloured dots and stripes, as opposed to an impressively painted scene from mythology or history. Classical art gave me a story, a skill to admire, and a meaning that feels comfortable and easy to understand.

It was while studying the work of Ad Reinhardt when it finally clicked. I was just staring at this black canvas of nothingness, and somehow it made me think more than any Greek mythology painting had ever made me do. The ironic thing is that the one rule Ad Reinhardt had while painting, was that his work was supposed to have no meaning. Ad Reinhardt rejected art that had any meaning at all. He thought that art was supposed to have no subject, no symbolism, no emotion, no representation, no texture, no colour, nothing. And yet, while looking at his work, I saw all of it.

Ad Reinhardt exhibition at David Zwirner (2013) featuring a series of the iconic “abstract paintings” by Ad Reinhardt painted between 1954–1967.

There is something so beautifully human about finding meaning in a piece that is supposed to have no meaning at all. It not only reveals your inner world in a way. It also reveals a deeply human need for meaning. And it is within this search for meaning, that a fundamental human trait peaks around the corner: imagination.

It was in in that moment, when imagination took over, that I felt something oddly familiar. I have known imagination all my life. Not as an art viewer, but as a scientist.

It is within this imagination where science and art quietly meet. A quick glance at each other. Because, to my disappointment, that is all they will ever do. I see it when I talk to my friends. My social circle is interesting as half of them are in STEM fields, and the other half are in the arts. When I tell my STEM friends that art and science are similar, they look at me in confusion. I am met with defensiveness and discomfort at my statement. “Art is so subjective, it doesn’t explain anything like science does.” Funny thing is, when I tell my art friends that science is an art, the exact same thing happens. “Science is just data and rules. There is no creativity at all. The two are nowhere near the same.” You would almost think that the only thing they have in common is a superiority complex.

Both groups resist comparison. Both groups don’t like to be associated with the other. Both groups seem to place their own discipline on a pedestal. Both groups seem to reject the idea that the other might share something fundamental with them.

But here is the uncomfortable truth that both groups may not want to hear: Both, the sciences and the arts are driven by the exact same fundamental motivation: The desire to understand and describe the world. Both disciplines are born from wonder.

It was the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze who once asked his students a simple question: “What is an idea?” He argued that you never simply have an idea. You don’t have ideas in general. Instead, you have an idea in painting, in biology, in philosophy, in physics. Ideas are not abstract thoughts floating freely in your mind. They emerge from disciplines. From a medium. They emerge from the unknown. From things that resist understanding. From problems that force you to think.

This idea of what an idea really is relates to science more than we might like to admit. Thinking is all we do. Science is often presented as purely logic, objective, and rule-based, but this is far from the truth. In fact, I see science as quite the opposite: science is inherently imaginative, just like art. Both of them start with ideas. In science, we call them hypotheses. Hypotheses are ideas about how the world works. They are proposals. They are questions. They are thought of. Imaginative.

Once we have our ideas, we test them with experiments. Except an experiment is not just a simple test in the way you may think. It is a carefully designed scenario. A constructed situation meant to make visible what was not visible before. Similar to how a painting works or how a movie scene is made. Science invents models, metaphors, and frameworks that allows us to make sense of the world in a certain way. And at its core is imagination. Without imagination, there is no idea, no hypothesis, no experiment, and no theory.

Art works in a similar way. It is also build upon imagination. The only difference is that they use different materials and has a different intended audience. Art tries to make sense of our world not through theories, but though emotions and human experiences.

It is easy and romantic to think of the arts as this purely emotional, intuitive discipline. However, art is also not purely imaginative as some may think. Similar to science, art also operates with rules, materials, techniques, traditions, and internal logic. A painting can be objectively bad. A composition can be off. An artwork can be evaluated, critiqued, and argued about. Not through emotions, but through reasoning.

Artists are scientists in the sense that they experiment too. They test materials, forms, and ideas. They revise, discard, and repeat. A common phrase in the arts is “kill your darlings.” Which is conceptually the same as the phrase used in science: “be prepared to falsify your hypothesis.” Both phrases remind scientists and artists to let go of their initial idea when needed and to be careful with falling in love with it.

Another way in which scientists and artists are alike is in the way they both experience the constraints of our physical world. Think of how a scientific model of a tree, needs to represent a tree, so too does a painting or performative piece that represents a tree, need to have some sort of tree-ness in it so we can recognise it as a tree.

The connection between science is art is not just conceptually, however. They are also practically connected, and it is all around us. Science provides the tools, the material, and the technologies that make new forms of art possible. Paint is developed through chemistry, cameras work by the laws of physics, dance relies on human biology, and 3D printing exists because of engineering. Moreover, science inspires art. Think about science fiction, ethical dilemmas, literature, film and visual art.

At the same time, art helps us to make sense of science. Diagrams, that help medical students study the human body, animations that explain meiosis and mitosis. Visualisation, storytelling, metaphors, all translate abstract data into something we can understand, feel, and remember. Art reminds science, that knowledge is not only to be known, it is to be understood.

Science and art are thus not separate worlds, they are constantly shaping each other. Without art, we do not make sense of science. Without science, art can not exist. They challenge each other. And when they meet something special happens: knowledge becomes human. Art asks why. Science asks how. Us humans need both questions answered, they always have. It are the fundamental questions to ask in search of meaning. They are central to imagination. I think it’s time to stop glancing at each other. To stop looking down at the other discipline. Instead, look each other deeply in the eyes. Share a soft touch, and slowly fall in an embrace. Only then, you can understand what has always been there: A shared language for understanding the world.

Published on Substack