What is more important, art or science?

Science - Science gives us a greater understanding of the universe around us and leads to technologies and techniques that extend life, treat, cure or prevent disease, allow improved communication, rapid transportation, and so on and so forth.

Art makes things more aesthetically pleasing and can me a median of social commentary and communication. But it doesn't provide all the goodies that science does.

Todd

 

Science is art.

 

Neither has inherent value.

 

Art is a science

Science is an art

 

For this post I'll just blindly assume that something can be important.

I'd say that Science would more important. Science doesn't need arts, while arts without science are shallow.

 

While I will put more emphasis on science being "more important" for the benefits it provides, I will say that a culture and society cannot progress while one or the other are held back.

As Toby Ziegler mentioned on The West Wing with regards to cutting the funding for the National Endownment for the Arts:

Not all of us will work to find cures for cancer, develop a better Wi-Fi or build a more efficient engine. Science may be a panacea but it cannot exist as a stand-alone even if we fetishize it. Our entire knowledge and understanding (not just "science" even though scientia means "knowledge") must progress. Science is amoral; how we use it makes it moral or immoral; right or wrong. How we determine what is moral or not is significantly shaped by non-scientific disciplines and attitudes (including the arts).

The Nazis had excellent scientific programs. They had a horrible policies towards the arts (that didn't fit their mold).

 

As stated by Bo Burnham...

ART IS A LIE. NOTHING IS REAL.

However, I do love both for what they hold. Each holds a different sort of mystery...

 

I personally find science less appealing, but it's obviously useful & necessary.
I don't think their worth is comparable though, both are important in distinct ways.

 

They don't exist in opposition to one another, but I will point out that art, as a conveyor of thought, deeply influences how we use science.

I would hate to live in a world without scientific advances such as modern medicine and computing. But art, particularly literature, made a great moral case for making those medical advances available for the once miserable masses in the 19th and 20th centuries. I don't imagine such lively popular support, from all classes, for the welfare state which gave England public healthcare would have come about without the influence of artists like Dickens, for example. Of course, the compassion of the artists was only good so far as it convinced people to make use of that science; they would have been helpless, calling for a non-existent remedy had those scientific advances never been made.

It is much easier to point out specific examples of where science has done humanity a great service. It's harder with art. Art both shapes and reflects how we think, but art's purpose is to refine, challenge and develop human thought, which often occurs much more subtly than scientific advances. Ironically, art can be less pretty and less glittering in that respect. Art's presence is often subconscious, but that doesn't mean it is inferior or any less influential than clear scientific accomplishments. The reverse often applies, too; to believe science has been a failure for not developing an easy, single cure for cancer ignores the massive steps that have been made to understand it, which are much quieter and largely cumulative, rather than consisting of particular great successes.

Science is unspeakably valuable. But without using science in some sort of moral framework, its value becomes self-fulfilling, rather than being a way to better ourselves as individuals and societies. Science can exist in a vacuum as art cannot. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if we allow an amoral approach to science overpower a moral approach to art, I don't quite know why we should value science more. As Vonnegut puts it, “beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.” Know for the sake of knowing, yes, but don't just leave it at that. Art and science are more than capable of working in tandem to make better societies and wiser people.

Art and science are both vital in making us educated, wise and well-rounded. We needn't pit them against each other.

 

Neither can be more important. It has been said that science is the study of our world, but art is how we see it.

 

Neither. You can find art in science, and science in art. They are two different sides of the same coin.

 

I had to re-frame the question in order to force an answer out of myself that wasn't "neither"! To make a long story short, if I was the ruler of a country, then I'd clearly invest more time and resources in science. And there would be less useless studies such as "Do ducks prefer showers or baths?"

 

To me, art, because it requires effort from me, while science doesn't really.

 

The question is a little silly; they're not really comparable and both important. Science advances our understanding of facts; art advances understanding of the abstract like emotions and perceptions.

I wouldn't say one is the other, as art is done to evoke feelings while science is done to learn about reality. But they are two parts of being alive.

^^ShieldAgentAlex, you sound pretty confident. Just wait until you get to college and grad-level classes.

 

Oh god, don't make me think about that.

 

I think both are equally important.

 

Nothing has inherent value, but I think he meant it in a subjective to the individual sort of way? Then again maybe he just meant in general. anyway, its hard for me to chose between essentially the two best things in life. I dont care at all which is more 'valuable' to society, and I very much enjoy both equally so I'm going to say that neither one is more important than the other, to me.

 

They both have their place.

Happy days