Analysis of Popular Stereotypes
Uploaded by ihatesuchin on Jul 05, 2004
Popular stereotypes frequently present the scientist and the artist as extreme opposites in their pursuit of understanding - the scientist as being objective, disciplined and rational, and the artist as being subjective, impulsive and imaginative. Yet are they really so very different in the ways they look at the world? To what extent do you consider these stereotypes accurate, and to what extent do you consider them distortions of the ways in which the sciences and the arts give us their knowledge?
Is there a difference between an artist and a scientist, except their profession? Are people born to be professors? Have some people a 'rational' brain? Or is it so that the artist have a bigger right brain-half that the scientist? Has an artist a greater ability to express him- or herself? - Is it a genetic question?
One thing is obvious: people are not the same, everyone is individual with individual interests and hobbies. Some like to paint and some like to play with atoms and molecules. But the question remains; Is there a genetic difference between a scientist and an artist?
Undoubtable is that the public opinion of scientists and artists is as two extremists. One as rational, often alone, thinking, and the other as impulsive, 'flower-power' and poetic and philosophical. How come?
I believe that the human brain works in a way that is similar to a computer's way of storing information on a hard disk, or maybe the other way around, in files and directories, different directories for different kinds of information. That is, if we hear about an artist, we categorize him with quite many attributes; impulsive, subjective, imaginative, etc. etc. But then, why do we have these attributes? And more interesting, why is it a general opinion? Is it based on internal preferences, inborn values, or external impressions, gained from others?
When I first read the question above, I realized that this is my idea of normal scientists and artists. But I also understood that this is only a generalization based on the definition of the two professions. First, let me try to define science, taken from Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English; "knowledge about the world, especially based on examination and testing, and on facts that can be proven". So according to this definition, a scientist must find his knowledge after he has done some kind of observation, either it is on a piece of paper or he...