by Gemma Anderson
Intellect, Ltd., Bristol and Chicago, 2017
pp. 268, illus, col., b/w
ISBN: 978-1-78320-810-4.
Reviewed by Richard Kade
Ubiquitous Iconoclast
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1622 USA
ubiq_icon@hotmail.com
Drawing as a Way of Knowing Art and Science is a scholarly work looking at the field of morphology. Therein lies the proverbial rub. Such intense focus on morphology as a means to view the similarities and contrasts between Art and Science sheds very little light on any facet of the subject.
(Quick! When’d you last hear any toddler proclaim, “Mommy, when I grow up, I want to be a morphologist!”? Yeah, right.)
The author’s passion about her specialty is, in an Emersonian way, commendable. She credits the poet and dramatist, Goethe with coining the term morphology in 1792. Of course, he probably was “Johann come lately” given the history of morphological analysis dating back to the ancient Indian linguist Pāṇini, who formulated the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the text Aṣṭādhyāyī by using “a constituency grammar.”
Greco-Roman grammatical tradition (Aristotle et al.) also engaged in morphological analysis. Thus Goethe, after branching out into botany (barkin’ up wrong tree?) and bombing out with his 1831 study of the intermaxillary bone, wisely returned to his strong suits of poetry (Der Zauberlehrling — Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and drama (Faust, Egmont and others)
Plumbing the “depths” of such questionable insights as those of Paul Klee and Michel Foucault [1] sets readers on a kaleidoscopic tour (or series of detours) of other such equally specious fields as Isomorphology and Isomorphogenesis replete with exhaustively comprehensive exploration of the work of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson among others. George Orwell’s immutable warning seems to yell out, “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
Such study is best summarized by Gertrude Stein “There is no there, there” with partial dissent from Bill Clinton, “That depends on what is is.”
To the author’s credit, not all of this is mired in morphological merdic matter. The book does cover the transdisciplinary studies of da Vinci as well as some of the half-century of pages (both the print journal and websites) of Leonardo begun by the late Frank Malina.
Still, a broader study (say, the Leonardo Music Journal to cite one example) would doubtless have yielded far richer food for thought. After all, Anderson’s reference to Kandinsky would have benefited from the writings of the late Bulat M. Galeyev [2] centering on late 20th Century Scriabin Prometheus performances.
Okay, how might a better study avoid being caught in cognitive clap-trap?
The collaboration between Richard Feynman and Jirayr Zorthian from 1945 through 1953 was recalled in this space two decades ago [3]. Their idea was to produce “two Leonardos” by having each learn all that the other could teach about his respective field of study. Feynman, interviewed in 1981, mused:
I have a friend who is an artist and he has taken a view with which I don’t agree. He will hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is!” and I’ll agree. Then he’ll say, “I, as an artist can see how beautiful it is but you, as a scientist, will take it all apart and it becomes a dull thing.” I think his view is kind of nutty.
First of all, the beauty he sees is available to other people and to me, too, although I may not be quite as refined, aesthetically, as he is. But I can appreciate the beauty of the flower.
At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells and their complicated actions which have an intrinsic beauty. It’s not just beauty at the level of one centimeter, this is beauty at smaller dimension; that of the inner structure.
Also, there are the processes. The fact that the colors of the flowers are evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting because it means that insects can see color which raises a question. Do aesthetics exist in lower forms? All kinds of interesting questions [stem from this].
Scientific knowledge only adds to the excitement, mystery and awe of a flower. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
Zorthian did offer a rebuttal [4] of sorts.
Bottom line conclusions of the long-threatened piece i would write, were it not for laziness, are that no real difference exists between art and science since science is merely a form of art with a mathematical overlay. From that, no such things exist as genius (a savant is the closest approximation) or intellectual. For that last item, bumper stickers should proclaim, “Pseudo-intellectual is redundant.”
My admittedly perfunctory pamphlet to flesh out these observations would be a study in text versus context examining the unaccompanied violin and cello works of Bach as well as Syrinx by Debussy.[5]
Thrown into the mix also should be the quote from Einstein, “I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” [6]
Notes:
[1] Leonardo Reviews: Foucault Against Himself posted at: leonardo.info/reviews_archive/jun2015/caillat-kade.php
[2] Vanechkina, Irina Leonidovna and Bulat M. Galeyev, “Prometheus: Scriabin + Kandinsky” Leonardo — Vol. 31, Issue 3, 1998, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA — pp 183-184
[3] Kade, Richard, “Endnote — De Profundus: Adumbrative Reflections?” — Leonardo Vol. 33, Issue 3, 2000, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA — p. 237
[4] Zorthian, Jirayr, Rebuttal to Feynman’s brief Ode to a Flower — posted at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyDndEzmAZE
[5] https://ubiqicon.us/sporadic-discourse-spanning-decades
[6] Viereck, George Sylvester “What Life Means to Einstein” — The Saturday Evening Post Vol. 202 No. 18, Indianapolis, IN October 26, 1929 — p. 117 posted at: http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/what_life_means_to_einstein.pdf