Science vs. The Arts

Picasso: Before me, artists used to get ideas from the past. But as of this moment, they are coming from the future, fast and loose.

Einstein: Absolutely from the future.
Picasso: I think in the moment of the pencil to paper, the future is mapped out in the face of the person drawn.

Imagine that the pencil is pushed hard enough, and the lead goes through the paper into another dimension. (Picasso and Einstein start to get excited.)

Einstein: Yes!

Picasso: A kind of fourth dimension, if thatʻs what you want to call it. . .

Einstein: I canʻt believe youʻre saying this! A fourth dimension!

Picasso: And that fourth dimension is. . . the future.

Einstein: Wrong.

Picasso (arguing): The pencil pokes into the future and sucks up ideas and transfers them to the paper, for Christʻs sake. And what the hell do you know about it anyway. . . youʻre a scientist! You just want theories. . .

Einstein: Yes, and like you, the theories must be beautiful. You know why the sun doesnʻt revolve around the earth? Because the idea is not beautiful enough. If youʻre trying to prove that the sun revolves around the earth, in order to make the theory fit the facts, you have to have the planets moving backwards, and the sun doing loop-the-loops. Too ugly. Way ugly.

Picasso: So youʻre saying you bring a beautiful idea into being?


Einstein: Yes. We create a system and see if the facts can fit it.


Picasso: So youʻre not just describing the world as it is?


Einstein: No! We are creating a new way of looking at the world!

Picasso: So youʻre saying you dream the impossible and put it into effect?

Einstein: Exactly.

            This passage was my favorite part of this play. I think that not only in the play but in society today science and the arts are constantly at war, trying to prove to be the most important. This causes a lot of competition and unnecessary conflict. The two subjects are both very important in very different ways but neither could exist without each other. They are also both essential to mankind and society today. The play Picasso at the Lapin Agile is about the conflict between a scientist and an artist both thinking that their work was the most important. Throughout the play they go back and forth until they finally come to the realization that they are both very similar and are doing very important things in life.

“There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art.... Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.” Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was an American screenwriter and a novelist. He lived from July 1888 to March 26, 1959 and was greatly affected by the Great Depression. He was in the arts and wrote many major movies and he fully believed that the world needed the arts and the sciences. If more people were to have this train of thinking I believe that a lot more could be achieved.