Notes for a piece on Art and Science as metaphors
In a recent piece we wrote this:
Art is a metaphor, as are science and technology, that empowers humans to create and be created on a human scale, without obligatory reference to God. This is its essential problem for fundamentalist Islam.
We have been told that this sounds pretty obscure. Let’s try to elaborate. An invention is not just a thing, but it is also a challenge to do even better; so is a work of art. And technology and art feed on themselves; they don’t want to necessarily check back with some holy book to see if they are going in the right direction.
Imagine you lived in a world where everything had to be checked back with a holy book to see if it was okay to invent, and imagine the answer was “no” a lot of the time. We wrote about this in our piece on patents.
Imagine a world where you can’t have a “Mona Lisa smile” because the Mona Lisa is illegal; imagine a world where you can’t be statuesque, because statues are forbidden. The metaphors simply do not exist; people don’t have those words to express a thought. Imagine a world where they don’t say “That’s not Rocket Science” or “Brain Surgery” because there’s so little of that.
The intersection of science and technology for many Americans occurs in the beauty and performance of sport. Imagine a world where you can’t aspire to be Venus Williams, Brandy Chastain or Brett Favre, because such activities are forbidden and attacked.
Imagine a world without the metaphors of achievement to aspire to and to inspire others.
March 9th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Dear Jack,
You have truly been blessed with not just the ability to see clearly but to communicate that sight to the rest of us. Thank you for passing your blessings to us.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
“Imagine a world without the metaphors of achievement to aspire to and to inspire others.”
Sublime and a sledgehammer, all at once.
Good post.