So, I recently answered a question concerning art and science—why is there a divide, real or imagined, there?

At the risk of writing a legitimate and informative post, this is a subject I’ve given a lot of thought to. There are a number of reasons for the art/science divide, some of which build upon each other, some of which are independent, some of which are purely social and some of which are, I think, entirely valid.Science is an intellectual pursuit. Phrases such as “it’s not rocket science” are thrown around to imply that a task is easy and anyone should be able to do it. This creates an umbral implication of “rocket science is difficult and only highly intelligent people should be able to do it.” Science is regarded as something for the elite–and, due to this perception, scientists regard themselves as being among the elite.

Art, in contrast, is a creative endeavor. While the word is certainly used in phrases such as “there’s an art to it” which imply something which requires a je ne sais quoi—perhaps it is a learned skill or a native talent—there is no real suggestion that it’s difficult, or, more specifically, it appears to only refer to a single application of the skill. Even artists who are generally perceived as brilliant are never expected to have skills beyond the one.

So, apply to this the concept of the looking-glass self–if society believes scientists are just more intelligent and capable, the scientist will believe himself to be. If society believes artists are only gifted in a particular field, the artist will believe herself to be.

This explains the divide, but it doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Most notably, this only explains why artists don’t dabble in science, not the other way around. This, in part, is because I feel scientists are more inclined to dabble in art, or to believe themselves more than capable of doing so if they felt so inclined.

Now, I’m not a scientist, though it is more a lack of interest on my part than a lack of ability. I’m more interested in how people work. But speaking from my primarily artistic perspective, I’m of two minds about this whole divide. On the one hand, I like to encourage people to be artistic and to create awesome things, thus increasing the amount of awesome things in the world. On the other hand, there is a sense that many people have, that they are more capable in certain fields than they are, and this has a tendency to produce inferior products and people who don’t quite understand that there is such a thing as talent, and they don’t have it. With writing, at least, this produces infuriatingly bad prose—infuriating, because the writer is definitely intelligent, but in a way which lends itself to pomposity. It ends up just being offensive.

Ultimately as far as I’m concerned, the more the better, as much as I would like a mechanism for better educating bad writers on how to stop being bad. The problem as I see it is getting artists more interested in science, more willing to dabble and experiment and contribute to the field.

But I believe there’s a difference, and in the end there’s always going to be a divide.