Abstract

My object in these lectures is to show that Science is a form of Art, though not of fine art; in other words, that it is one example of a process of which fine art is the most obvious example, the process of making out of certain materials a result into which the mind itself enters. Clearly enough the material of the artist, whatever it be, marble or paints or tones or words, is moulded by the artist into a shape which it would not possess unless something in the artist’s mind found expression in it. Science also is a product of the mind’s interference and is artificial. But it differs from fine art, I shall try to show, in this respect: in fine art the material is controlled from the mind, or at least it is principally controlled from the mind. In science the material is the facts of nature ; but while science would not be except for the mind of the scientist, the work is controlled from the side of the material itself, and his mind is instrumental to the product rather than in some sense intrinsic to it as in fine art.