issue176 【小鸡快跑小组】限时未成功修改过求拍

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TOPIC: ISSUE176 - "The function of science is to reassure; the purpose of art is to upset. Therein lies the value of each."
WORDS: 506          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2007-2-26

Science and art are both considered as the most important things for people to pursue. In my opinion, the motivation for people to pursue science and art is the value behind them, which can explain what, how and why the world is. Both of them can either reassure or upset people. However, there are some specific differences between science and art.

As we all know, science is one of the main tools for people to explorer the unknown world. In most cases, it reassures people about some facts or phenomena which have puzzled us for a long time. In biology, the finding of DNA resolved many secrets about the life in the world. According to the language of biologists, everyone’s character of life such as the gender and appearance even the longevity can read from the DNA segments. Additionally, science provides people important methods or tools, which can help people to control and predict how the world is running. In the excited development of physics of 20th century, quantum mechanics successfully predicts many significant phenomena such as positive electrons. Quantum mechanics also helps us to control the performance of the integrated circuits which is one of the most important characters of the information times. On the other hand, many contemporary scientific discoveries upset the common notions of people. Take again the quantum mechanics as an example. The wave-particle duality forms the basis of quantum mechanics. In common sense, it is hard to imagine that a person can propagate like water wave, but in quantum mechanics a person can tunnel through a hole smaller than his or her head though the probability is close to zero.

Admittedly, most people think that art is totally different from science not only in content but also in methodology. Actually, art is the reflection of the world and it represents mostly the imagination of artists based on the reality of the world. Therefore, every art works has its origin of the reality though sometimes it is very hard to grasp. For example, many artists of realism created works as close to the reality as possible. To the contrary, many contemporary abstract paintings try to present the complex psychological world of people's thoughts. The painting “No. 5, 1948” by Jackson Pollock apparently is difficult to understand for most common people, so in the first glance it may upset us that why such a doodle deserves a high priced auction.

However, not strictly speaking to some extent, art exhibits the nature of human beings while science is the reflection of the impersonal world though in methodology there lies some common sense. Because the development for science is based on the accumulation of scientific knowledge while art focuses on the creation of different forms from others. In physics, the inspiration of quantum mechanics originates from the classic Newton mechanics and the latter one still is widely used in many fields.

The fully understanding of the value of art and science is very complex and the above considerations present the multifunction of art and science.