In
Defense of Liberal and Fine Arts
I just heard a piece on
NPR’s “Fresh Air” about Steve Jobs’ belief in the interrelatedness of
technology and liberal arts. As a
graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky
with a major in History and English, I remain convinced that my education’s
broad-based knowledge has served me well.
Those of us in the College of Arts and Science had to take a number of
hours in physical and biological sciences, arts and humanities, mathematics,
philosophy, and languages along with many more hours in our major field. This broad-based knowledge has allowed me to
find interests in many things, not just my own majors. It has allowed me to think in complex ways
using both sides of my brain, and that alone has further enriched my life.
My friends, fellow high school teachers in the fields of higer mathematics and science, are also talented in music and/or art. My daughter, a PhD in micro-biology, was as gifted in music and composition as she was in science. My brother-in-law's major in English did not impede him in any way when he and his friend created LexJet, a company focused on technology. Their creative ways of implementing new ideas have made LexJet one of the fastest growing small companies in Florida.
I am
always saddened when I hear politicians say we need to stress only technology,
math, and science and go on to say or imply that anything in the arts is either
a luxury we can’t afford or simply superfluous.
We need arts, science, and
technology. Steve Jobs’ iPhone, iPad,
and Macintosh computer have revolutionized technology, and he did this by
applying the arts and employing both
kinds of experts in the design of his projects.
If one studies the great past civilizations--from the Greeks and Romans
to the Renaissance--one thing is a constant: arts and science were honored
equally.
The Greeks were both
scientists and scholars and created or invented many things we continue to
use. Philosophy was valued as highly as
mathematics; art was as honored as much as science. Research in all of these fields was supported
by the government.
·
Anaximander, a philosopher from Miletus, is historically accepted
as the creator of the first map of the world, and the creation of the map greatly improved
navigation and trade.
·
Greek dramatists included Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and
Lysistrata; plays like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
·
Masks used in the enactment of dramas were designed to maximize acoustics
and the theatres were architectural wonders built on hillsides and arced to
allow many to see the plays well and to hear the actors perform. The grand Greek
amphitheaters were constructed so as to transmit even the smallest sound to any
seat. Art, therefore, produced science
and technology.
·
The love of art did not hinder the Greeks in their development of
the modern weapons of their day, including the catapult, the best “weapon of
mass destruction” for more than a thousand years.
The Romans, like the Greeks,
valued art, music, philosophy, and science in equal measure.
·
Pythagoras, 5th century B. C. Italian
philosopher--someone most of us learned about in math class when we were
introduced to the Pythagorean Theorem-- exposited that mathematics was
everywhere, and that music depended upon math.
·
The Roman Colosseum and the Pantheon; sculpture
like Apollo Belvedere; landscape paintings
and elaborate mural; Media, Oedipus, and Agamemnon —these are but a few of Rome’s artistic
wonders.
·
The creative minds that produced the fine
arts aided the development of aqueducts that delivered water to cities, indoor
plumbing, dams, bridges, and vast systems of highways, not to mention lipstick and
umbrellas.
It goes without saying that
Leonardo Da Vinci is the epitome of the marriage of art and science as he not
only painted The Last Supper but also
designed an airplane. To Leonardo, Mr. Renaissance,
art and science were one.
It is because I see value in the arts as well as the sciences that I view
funding cuts in art and music in elementary and high schools as very
short-sighted. Creative thinking is not
only a skill used by painters and writers, it is also a skill vital to dreaming
up new concepts in technology. Florida’s
Governor Scott has disparaged college majors like anthropology, having said it
was a useless skill. This just shows
that he has a limited awareness of anthropology as a discipline. Does he not see merit in demography, an understanding
of cultures? It is this lack of vision in Scott and others that could doom us
to a world of only technocrats. Without fiction, movies, opera, live theatre,
painting, sculpture, dance, and all forms of art, how drab our lives would
be. We’d be little more than automatons.
Yes, we do need young people
who are very computer savvy, but who will dream up the next computer? We do need doctors,
mathematicians, and engineers well skilled in their fields; but as importantly,
we must have the creative minds to discover new
ways to cure diseases and questioning minds to lead us to a better
understanding of our universe and a desire to explore others.
To ensure
that our country not only keeps apace with the rest of the world but also
excels in all areas, we must have a generation who can use both sides of the brain,
a brain that can look beyond the paradigm, to think over, under, and outside the box. If we only focus on one kind of knowledge and
devalue all else, we will be a second-rate nation that learns to use what other
nations develop. Yes, there is a place
for the liberal and fine arts. Don’t
lose sight of that.
