Art history and science history are both told as stories of the ‘great’ figures of the field.
Books teaching scientific method often don’t mention Bacon, Bernouilli, or Bohr, and books teaching artistic method often don’t mention Brueghel, Beethoven, or Buñuel.
I think PhilGoetz uses art and science here as ‘that what artists, scientists produce’. In that sense, ‘who did it’ is more important in art than in science—a lot of art cannot really be appreciated without knowing the background of the creator and/or his or her motives. But the appreciation for, say, Maxwell’s equations does not depend on what I know of their maker.
My training in music composition focuses quite a bit on Famous Dead People; but using examples from their music. It’s a case of “This is how Bach/Beethoven/Brahms/Schoenberg did this, it proved effective, you can possibly learn from it.” We’re not expected to write in pastiche styles however, rather to approach more fundamental issues of writing music with methods that have been shown to work.
I can’t really see any other way TO approach it; the reason that Bach’s strong basslines work is rooted in how humans perceive sound. The easiest way to pass this on is to provide examples.
EDIT: That said, I’d be interested in reading that Hindemith book. (Hilariously, in light of the current discussion, it’s because he’s a composer I’m interested in—a Famous Dead Person.) My supervisor wrote a paper on Hindemith’s approach to teaching counterpoint, but I didn’t realize he had textbooks.
No, as books on physics, or mathematics, or neuroscience, are not books on scientific method. They are books on the particular content of a particular field.
But in the same way, The Craft of Musical Composition is about the content of the field of musical composition. It’s about the mathematics of musical notes, the various tonal and atonal structures available, the dynamics of moving from one structure to another, different approaches to counterpoint, etc… Right?
There definitely are parallels between studying either the process or the “content” of a scientific field and studying what I would refer to as “technique” in the art world. Musical composition is one example, and as a visual artist I can add things like color theory, semiotics, visual composition, and the handling of various mediums. These are phenomena that can and have been taught and written about. They can be as objectively addressed as any scientific subject in that you can say “if you follow procedure X, you’ll get Y result”.
But these things are supplemental to the primary goals of art/artists which are profoundly different from the goals of science/scientists. The goals of artists are generally personal and/or subconscious. They don’t (normally/consciously) involve a hypothesis to be proven or disproven (and artist statements are typically written after the work is complete, not beforehand).
There are formal studies of what groups of artists may be trying to achieve (surrealists, cubists, expressionists, etc), but the cultural and biographical details are usually very relevant. I guess I’d say that your test is one possible measure of a more general question: “Is the endeavor more focused on making a statement, or on answering a question?”. The more it emphasizes the former the more likely it is to be art (or politics, or lunatic raving. Or all three, depending on how entertaining, persuasive, or coherent it is), the more it emphasizes the latter the more likely it is to be something deserving of the name science (even if it may also deserve to be preceded by the words “sloppy” or “pseudo”).
Art history and science history are both told as stories of the ‘great’ figures of the field.
Books teaching scientific method often don’t mention Bacon, Bernouilli, or Bohr, and books teaching artistic method often don’t mention Brueghel, Beethoven, or Buñuel.
Examples of books teaching artistic method, which don’t much dwell on famous dead people: Writing the Broadway Musical, Mastering Composition, and The Craft of Musical Composition.
It sounds to me like you’re comparing books on art history to books on scientific method.
I think PhilGoetz uses art and science here as ‘that what artists, scientists produce’. In that sense, ‘who did it’ is more important in art than in science—a lot of art cannot really be appreciated without knowing the background of the creator and/or his or her motives. But the appreciation for, say, Maxwell’s equations does not depend on what I know of their maker.
My training in music composition focuses quite a bit on Famous Dead People; but using examples from their music. It’s a case of “This is how Bach/Beethoven/Brahms/Schoenberg did this, it proved effective, you can possibly learn from it.” We’re not expected to write in pastiche styles however, rather to approach more fundamental issues of writing music with methods that have been shown to work.
I can’t really see any other way TO approach it; the reason that Bach’s strong basslines work is rooted in how humans perceive sound. The easiest way to pass this on is to provide examples.
EDIT: That said, I’d be interested in reading that Hindemith book. (Hilariously, in light of the current discussion, it’s because he’s a composer I’m interested in—a Famous Dead Person.) My supervisor wrote a paper on Hindemith’s approach to teaching counterpoint, but I didn’t realize he had textbooks.
No, as books on physics, or mathematics, or neuroscience, are not books on scientific method. They are books on the particular content of a particular field.
But in the same way, The Craft of Musical Composition is about the content of the field of musical composition. It’s about the mathematics of musical notes, the various tonal and atonal structures available, the dynamics of moving from one structure to another, different approaches to counterpoint, etc… Right?
There definitely are parallels between studying either the process or the “content” of a scientific field and studying what I would refer to as “technique” in the art world. Musical composition is one example, and as a visual artist I can add things like color theory, semiotics, visual composition, and the handling of various mediums. These are phenomena that can and have been taught and written about. They can be as objectively addressed as any scientific subject in that you can say “if you follow procedure X, you’ll get Y result”.
But these things are supplemental to the primary goals of art/artists which are profoundly different from the goals of science/scientists. The goals of artists are generally personal and/or subconscious. They don’t (normally/consciously) involve a hypothesis to be proven or disproven (and artist statements are typically written after the work is complete, not beforehand).
There are formal studies of what groups of artists may be trying to achieve (surrealists, cubists, expressionists, etc), but the cultural and biographical details are usually very relevant. I guess I’d say that your test is one possible measure of a more general question: “Is the endeavor more focused on making a statement, or on answering a question?”. The more it emphasizes the former the more likely it is to be art (or politics, or lunatic raving. Or all three, depending on how entertaining, persuasive, or coherent it is), the more it emphasizes the latter the more likely it is to be something deserving of the name science (even if it may also deserve to be preceded by the words “sloppy” or “pseudo”).