be dealing with assertions like those of Kuhn who asserts that the store of knowledge never increases. Kuhn felt that, in science, a paradigm develops over time and becomes established. Scientists then spend their time working on the fringes of the paradigm, solving minor problems and developing technology. But eventually the paradigm is overthrown by another, based on a different metaphysic and the process continues with no real growth in knowledge. This cynical view is traded by philosophers who substitute no better paradigm in its place but rely on outdated metaphysics and language to delve into the meaning of reality. Feyerabend contended indeed that science was no better than any other metaphysic. These attitudes belie the significant strides made by science in the last century. Already in the twenty first century many new hypotheses are evolving and the spin off in terms of our understanding of our physical, biological and psychological environments will be revolutionary. For philosophy to cash in on this revolution it has to engage in the science at the level of expert and this is the main problem for philosophy into the future. It is becoming increasingly impossible to understand the scientific paradigm from without. Yet to become part of that strange and exciting world demands knowledge of mathematical science beyond the scope of most philosophy courses. Philosophy has to play catch-up with the ever accelerating world of knowledge.
I struggled with these thoughts that had now so easily supplanted my earlier emotional turmoil. I was where I wanted to be - in deep rumination on life and its meaning. I was in a hermetic mode and felt happy to be cut off, away from the everyday world. I resolved to stay put for as long as provisions allowed. I would become the lone ascetic sitting on a cliff edge, looking out at the great Atlantic ocean. I was a brother to those Irish monks who had populated remote corners of the western coast in search of havens. I imagined these havens not as centres of prayer but of knowledge. The ancient knowledge of civilisation, almost lost in the barbarous post Roman era, was fermenting away quietly in barren rocky outcrops on the wild Irish coast. This vision of learned monks, spending their days reading and transcribing the old texts, was a source of inspiration to me. They were prepared to devote their whole lives to a love of knowledge. I would happily devote the rest of my days to the same pursuit.
There was an essential difference though. They lived in communities of like minded people. I am living alone. I do not have the support of fellow thinkers to help engage in vibrant dialectic. The modern man is designed to be a loner. He is taught to think as an individual from the earliest moment. Independent thinking and action is valued highly in modern culture. We despise the average approach. Intellectual snobbery becomes a necessary appendage of intellectual achievement. The intellectual has become the elect, the high priest of society. To be lumped in with the norm, no matter how elevated the standard is, is a kiss of death to the modern thinker. Every intellectual must have a unique voice. There is no common intellectual community. Cultures become disparate. Culture becomes polluted. The all-pervasive Anglo-Saxon culture, emanating from the English speaking worlds, has not the usual marks of older culture such as that of France. It has no direction, no sense of taste or what is good. It flies off in ever greater populist directions, a slave of a market place that drives the common denominator of what is deemed art to ever lower levels. Relativism soon makes art of everything and it loses its meaning. The long histories, of the development of cultural norms of what is art, are thrown out. Only in the smaller island cultures does a sense of the past guide the future. French culture is still very pure and confident in itself. French cinema can still deal with reality in an artful way and be of value. American film cannot avoid the entertainment quotient demanded by the commercial market place and has descended more and more into non-art pop. Being popular is not a negative but having it as the sole aim, removes the work from the sphere of art. This debasing of art has a great impact on society. Art is posited by society as its response to the physical and emotional environment of the times. It hopes to capture the paradigm of the age. It reflects the values of the community. It is the mark of a healthy community - where openness, freedom, reflection and expression are valued.
Art more than philosophy can unfold the deep layers of reality and existence. Is it right to even compare them? Art is active. Philosophy is passive. Science is active too and may be a better bedfellow for art. The essence of both is a form of creativity. There is nothing unless it is physically present whether it is a film, painting or novel. It has to exist to be art. Science also has to have its realism, its experiments and technological innovation. What do philosophers posit, only words and theory? The words can be converted into books but the books try not to be beautiful or poetic but solely to lay out arguments - not a created unity.
Art and science approach reality from differing paradigms but with a common goal. The holy grail of understanding is what drives both. Philosophy too seeks the holy grail but does so from within the mind. Art and science explicate the contortions of the mental process into pieces of reality - the work of art or the experiment. This linkage of the two worlds is what sets them apart from philosophy. Philosophy's lack of engagement with the world of objects induces a mindset that can lead to all sorts of solipsistic views of existence. The artist knows that the mind cannot create art without material. The beautiful thought processes behind any piece of creativity are lost unless externalised in solid form. The solipsistic artist cannot really call himself an artist. He must allow his art to come forth and materialise. Art is creation. It is doing. It is externalising.
The relativist would leap in joy if that were all it took to create art. Everything would be art. But what sets a work of art apart, what gives it value, is the paradigm of the artist in creating the work. This paradigm is one where the artist is searching for essence. The artist digs deep into reality to decipher meaning. This meaning can be visual or aural. It has to be sensual. To be good art, the communication of meaning must translate to others. The translation need not be exact or even as intended but it must evoke a meaning in others. There has to be an engagement. The main difference with science is that its engagement must be exact. Science demands that the communication be as intended. Classical science delivered just that and in the classical period science and art were most apart. But modern science of quantum theory re-introduces the inexactitude of communication. Now different observers with different views see different things. The state wave function reduces to the state being looked for. Art and science have never been closer.
What can the artist tell the scientist? Can he lead him along more productive paths? Both look at the world with theory laden eyes. The artist has ideas of beauty, of aesthetics, form and texture. He sees the object as a subject. He internalises the object and pushes it through his artistic filters. The creation that emanates is not meant to be commonly held objectivity but a self coloured, self sculpted image, totally unique. It is like creating a new word. The work of art describes how he sees a particular corner of spacetime. The physical creation is his communication to the rest of mankind. The word is out. Guernica is a small place in Spain but it is also a word that has come to mean the horrors of war. To explain the meaning of the word could take an entire book so much emotion is packed into Picasso's painting. The power of the work is that it translates such emotions to so many people. This communication is so much more efficient than verbal or written communication. A two dimensional surface with line and planes and different colours has managed to get so much across. The secret is that each mark on the canvas does not have solely one meaning. Each combination of lines and shades does not have just one meaning. Picasso has managed to build in parallel meanings and the combinations run towards the infinite. An individual looking at the large canvas resolves his own meaning and response. Picasso would have made a good quantum theorist. He would be at home in the world of infinite superposed states.
It is not surprising that modern art has veered away from the direct representational. This would be too restrictive in terms of communication. To depict an
object, say an apple, limits the modes of translation the more the apple is true to life. There is already a well defined word for an apple in society. By placing the apple in an environment and by changing or distorting colour and shape, the word 'apple' becomes less applicable but still largely identifiable. By getting more and more abstract the word 'apple' becomes non-applicable and a work of art - a new word is created. So it is natural that with more freedom of expression and thought that came with the enlightenment, there was a corresponding shift in the way art was created and portrayed. Unshackled from the strictures of direct representation, the modern artist could experiment with his art. He mixed up his media, his number of dimensions, shape, colour and content. Art has become a mixed bag with no laws or rules to guide it other than its audience response.
Both the artist and the scientist are experimenters. The scientist must perform his experiments to exacting rules and criticism. His outputs depend on repeatability. The artist performs his