Unlike The Arts, Science tells us something valuable about the world.
Supporting Argument:
Unlike the arts, knowledge in the sciences are valuable. Knowledge in the sciences are composed of facts, so they can only be interpreted a specific way. Knowledge gained from the arts trigger emotions and are interpreted and understood multiple ways. Since the knowledge gained from the arts varies between people, the knowledge gained cannot be universally understood. This means that the knowledge gained won’t tell us anything valuable about the world since we can’t even agree on what it tells us. Furthermore, knowledge from the arts only trigger emotions. Emotions only tell us about ourselves as an individual, which isn’t valuable when we want to know about the world. As an example, lets look at the Bhudda statue in Hong Kong.
According to wikipedia, the intention of creating the artwork “symbolises the harmonious relationship between man and nature, people and faith”. Most people who don’t have background knowledge of the artwork would not be able to interpret the artwork this way, and even those who do gain the intended message from the artwork are only able to do so with the support of factual knowledge about the artwork. This shows that even art that is intended to tell us something cannot effectively communicate their intended message without the help of factual knowledge, which is not gained from the arts. However, knowledge in the sciences actually tell us something valuable about the world. This is because the knowledge in the sciences are composed of facts, and facts can only be interpreted and understood a specific way, allowing people to easily communicate and expand knowledge from the sciences, thus making it more valuable when wanting learn about the world. Also, the sciences are an attempt at understanding the world, so the content of the knowledge is also valuable when wanting to know more about the world. A learning a simple fact such as ‘the Earth goes around the sun’ already helps to understand the world much better. And due to how simple it is to share knowledge from the sciences compared to the arts, a lot of simple facts like these can be learnt in a short amount of time, and they also build upon other simple facts so that the individual has a wider understanding of the world, thus allowing knowledge from the sciences to tell us much more valuable things about the world compared to knowledge from the arts.
Counter Argument:
Knowledge in the sciences are able to tell us valuable information about the natural world. Unlike the sciences, knowledge in art is gained through the senses, giving them the ability to show and immerse us in the information rather than just telling it to us, making knowledge from the arts much more valuable. Artwork may be subjective and can be interpreted many ways, but if used effectively, techniques can guide our interpretation of the artwork. Also, art is often made with a intended audience in mind who have some prior knowledge on the subject of the work. Those with prior knowledge will interpret the artwork similarly, meaning that the artwork effectively shares its information. The arts also trigger emotions, which allow the gained knowledge to have a lasting impact, making it even more valuable since it is less likely to be forgotten.
Take a look at the artwork below as an example:
This photo by Joe Rosenthal depicts American soldiers raising a flag during the Second World War. With some prior knowledge about the war, viewers will automatically imagine the setting of the artwork. Techniques such as the camera looking upwards, the flag against the sky, focus of the photo etc, along with some more prior knowledge such as the Americans were good, direct the viewer to feel the positive side of the war, such as the glory, freedom, heroics etc. The same knowledge cannot be gained through factual form, like the sciences, since the depth at which we can interpret the information will be limited. Also, since art is seen through our senses and immerses us with the subject, looking at this artwork will make us feel like the war was an experience, so we will think of the knowledge gained from the artwork as a memory, meaning that the knowledge gained from art will have a lasting impact thus being more valuable.
