I was wondering this morning about my engagement with the three large areas of knowledge that structure the world, or atleast the conventional world that our Indian school boards define for us - arts, science and commerce. I was generally concerned about my proximity with each of these three fields and was carefully considering my engagement with all the three. My general irritation with commerce stems from multiple facts - my inability to contribute to a conversation when I am with my family consisting of people talking about economics and money all the time, my in-congruence with with capitalistic ideologies, my aversion to empirical world and my general lack of interest in politics of business.
I have been an artistic person, or atleast I would like to believe so, given my strong interest in music, literature, craft and creativity. Strangely enough, arts always remained a peripheral subject in my early life. At the same time, emphasis on science as a vocational subject was something I was virtually convinced about. In addition, during my time, one could only get into architecture if one took science. So I ended up pursuing science - and I learnt a lot of jargon. However, what always kept on fascinating me was the ways in which people arrived at concepts in science. I wondered how people came to think of several ideas historically? For a long time, I had a hard time understanding the subjects of calculus, electricity, space, black holes - all of that...I never understood why was I studying them, or why would someone think of such things?
There is an artistic way to appreciate and learn the potency of all the scientific concepts - I have begun to discover this as I visit the numerous art works in the museums here, as well as when I read thoughts of various artists. The artistic way of learning the world is much more close to human nature, much more of a cognitive process. One arrives at important questions about the unsolved world by just peeping inside oneself or pondering about the incomprehensible outer world.
Looking at various exhibtions, compilations and works of artists around here, and deeper engagement into humanities and arts has allowed me to feel more confident of my questions. A lot of times, to my surprise, I concur upon questions that once have passed my mind earlier while visiting an artist's works. "I thought it too!" - I tell myself! But it's just a matter of getting the question out of your head, voicing it as sincerely and honestly as possible! Unlike the artistic world, the factual mind tries to resolve your questions far too quickly for you to even consider it at length.
For example, I wonder WHY can't I get a hang of geography? I confuse when people tell to me places, locations and cities all the time - I cannot figure them mentally on the cartographic map. When someone talks of Jordan or Israel, I confuse their location completely on the map. It is recently while visiting the Metropolitan museum of Art that I discovered that Mongolia, from where Mughals came, is in the Far East, ie, China's east. for some reason, I always assumed and mixed Mongolians and hence the Mughals with to come from the West of India, since their historically they came after the Muslims. Muslims came from the west of India, but since most invasions in India have happened from the west, I assumed the Mughals to come from the west too! I felt surprised, but I educated myself! I would feel awkward to share my under-information with anyone. But there is an strong philosophical question here.
Why did I assume the above assumption? Why did I never think of this before? What constructs geographical imagination in absence of the cartographic map? How do we imagine places through mediated facts? How do we situate them in our mind? What map does the mind make? What is the comparison of that map to the factual one? How is it important, rather when does it become important to align the map of the mind to the scientific map? What happens in the collision of the mental artistic map and the empirical scientific map? Why does it become a matter of joke, if one confuses this map of the mind to the map of the world? And why does this quickly become the aspect of evaluation, knowledge and judgement?
The above would easily become a strong ground for a research on epistemology . But the art world is soft enough to accommodate the above questions. It allows you to have them, pursue them and feel confident about them, unlike science which may put you down. But the intelligent scientist will constructively draw the artistic questions above into an imaginative workable solution. I always remain baffled by Einstein's invention of the 'microwave'. I once saw a documentary which revealed how Einstein resolved his question on microwaves or the relation between energy and light. His mother would tell him when he was still a small kid - "Dear son, all things in this world are connected!"
Einstein's innocent mind grew up to translate that simple philosophical proposition from his mother to the biggest invention of the century, and probably the most important equation in the history of science (E = mc 2)! I hence come to conclusion that the greatest scientist has to be rooted deeply into philosophy...
I have come to an understanding that it is ART that creates the world. It is through art that we produce the world. The branches of art - language, drawing, sculpture, poetry, music and so on gives the first expression to our understanding of the world, to something that our inner mind needs to articulate of the outside world in order to communicate, survive. The art world negotiates the boundary between the inside and outside. Art makes comprehensible something that is yet unanswered. It opens up large questions for the world to think about, to ponder upon. It constructs imaginations and makes way for science to act towards resolving them.
It is science that resolves the art-world. It pursues art more seriously to investigate if imaginations from art are viable, relevant. The scientific world resolves and makes the negotiation bearable - or it rests the unstable mind to some extent (or a large extent?). Science has also come to dialectically work with art.
It is commerce, that mobilizes science and art. The commercial world, today, ironically makes the outer world again unstable! I still do not find how commerce conceptually completes the triad with science and art, apart from merely giving it a value of exchange, quite a banal affair. However, as soon as I arrive at commerce, I feel at lack of words to talk about. So I must end this post here for people in the stream of commerce to explain their contribution in production of the world, beyond the realm of money.
I have been an artistic person, or atleast I would like to believe so, given my strong interest in music, literature, craft and creativity. Strangely enough, arts always remained a peripheral subject in my early life. At the same time, emphasis on science as a vocational subject was something I was virtually convinced about. In addition, during my time, one could only get into architecture if one took science. So I ended up pursuing science - and I learnt a lot of jargon. However, what always kept on fascinating me was the ways in which people arrived at concepts in science. I wondered how people came to think of several ideas historically? For a long time, I had a hard time understanding the subjects of calculus, electricity, space, black holes - all of that...I never understood why was I studying them, or why would someone think of such things?
There is an artistic way to appreciate and learn the potency of all the scientific concepts - I have begun to discover this as I visit the numerous art works in the museums here, as well as when I read thoughts of various artists. The artistic way of learning the world is much more close to human nature, much more of a cognitive process. One arrives at important questions about the unsolved world by just peeping inside oneself or pondering about the incomprehensible outer world.
Looking at various exhibtions, compilations and works of artists around here, and deeper engagement into humanities and arts has allowed me to feel more confident of my questions. A lot of times, to my surprise, I concur upon questions that once have passed my mind earlier while visiting an artist's works. "I thought it too!" - I tell myself! But it's just a matter of getting the question out of your head, voicing it as sincerely and honestly as possible! Unlike the artistic world, the factual mind tries to resolve your questions far too quickly for you to even consider it at length.
For example, I wonder WHY can't I get a hang of geography? I confuse when people tell to me places, locations and cities all the time - I cannot figure them mentally on the cartographic map. When someone talks of Jordan or Israel, I confuse their location completely on the map. It is recently while visiting the Metropolitan museum of Art that I discovered that Mongolia, from where Mughals came, is in the Far East, ie, China's east. for some reason, I always assumed and mixed Mongolians and hence the Mughals with to come from the West of India, since their historically they came after the Muslims. Muslims came from the west of India, but since most invasions in India have happened from the west, I assumed the Mughals to come from the west too! I felt surprised, but I educated myself! I would feel awkward to share my under-information with anyone. But there is an strong philosophical question here.
Why did I assume the above assumption? Why did I never think of this before? What constructs geographical imagination in absence of the cartographic map? How do we imagine places through mediated facts? How do we situate them in our mind? What map does the mind make? What is the comparison of that map to the factual one? How is it important, rather when does it become important to align the map of the mind to the scientific map? What happens in the collision of the mental artistic map and the empirical scientific map? Why does it become a matter of joke, if one confuses this map of the mind to the map of the world? And why does this quickly become the aspect of evaluation, knowledge and judgement?
The above would easily become a strong ground for a research on epistemology . But the art world is soft enough to accommodate the above questions. It allows you to have them, pursue them and feel confident about them, unlike science which may put you down. But the intelligent scientist will constructively draw the artistic questions above into an imaginative workable solution. I always remain baffled by Einstein's invention of the 'microwave'. I once saw a documentary which revealed how Einstein resolved his question on microwaves or the relation between energy and light. His mother would tell him when he was still a small kid - "Dear son, all things in this world are connected!"
Einstein's innocent mind grew up to translate that simple philosophical proposition from his mother to the biggest invention of the century, and probably the most important equation in the history of science (E = mc 2)! I hence come to conclusion that the greatest scientist has to be rooted deeply into philosophy...
I have come to an understanding that it is ART that creates the world. It is through art that we produce the world. The branches of art - language, drawing, sculpture, poetry, music and so on gives the first expression to our understanding of the world, to something that our inner mind needs to articulate of the outside world in order to communicate, survive. The art world negotiates the boundary between the inside and outside. Art makes comprehensible something that is yet unanswered. It opens up large questions for the world to think about, to ponder upon. It constructs imaginations and makes way for science to act towards resolving them.
It is science that resolves the art-world. It pursues art more seriously to investigate if imaginations from art are viable, relevant. The scientific world resolves and makes the negotiation bearable - or it rests the unstable mind to some extent (or a large extent?). Science has also come to dialectically work with art.
It is commerce, that mobilizes science and art. The commercial world, today, ironically makes the outer world again unstable! I still do not find how commerce conceptually completes the triad with science and art, apart from merely giving it a value of exchange, quite a banal affair. However, as soon as I arrive at commerce, I feel at lack of words to talk about. So I must end this post here for people in the stream of commerce to explain their contribution in production of the world, beyond the realm of money.
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