Crossovers – Art, Science and the Spiritual

Mike King

London Guildhall University

June 2001

I have worked for many years at the intersection of three distinct disciplines – art, science, and the spiritual, regarding each as an open and systematic inquiry into the deep structure of human experience. However it is becoming clearer that some kind of grand synthesis between the three areas, although many advocate it, is both unworkable and undesirable, and that a better metaphor for the interrelation of these disciplines than synthesis is indeed ‘crossover’.

But why not synthesis? Don’t we long for an end to partisanship? Don’t we want that profound peace that comes when differences are finally set aside, when identities merge? No, is the answer, deep down, no. When we make love with our partner we don’t do it as an artist, or as a scientist, or as a religionist. Love-making has its own dynamics, sufficient unto itself, and for its own reasons, and unless we leave our other concerns at the bedroom door we will be poor lovers. Likewise when meditating we don’t want voltmeters and spectrometers involved, when painting we don’t want to invoke the inverse-square law of gravitation, and when doing science we don’t sit on a comfortable cushion and close our eyes. But an apartheid of interests is just as bad, hence the attractiveness of ‘crossovers’, a metaphor that suggests travel to other lands, dialogues, open-mindedness, impressionability. 

Let us look at the three binary relationships between art, science and the spiritual:

Art and Science: When artists travel into the territory of science their immediate prize is of course technology. Since the appropriation of bronze-casting techniques developed for the making of canon in warfare, artists have long exploited new technologies, including more recently the use of photocopiers and computers. More intriguing is the encounter with science in its purer forms, having an aesthetic of its own, and an imagery made possible only by its instruments; imagery of worlds normally to small or too distant to impinge on our unaided senses. But the truly radical proposition, from the writer Leonard Schlain in his book Art and Physics, is that artists have always anticipated the developments of science, including relativity and quantum theory. Scientists would find it hard to acknowledge this proposition, but when they travel into the territory of art they bring back to science some very important tools, notably a fluidity of thinking and metaphor. The so-called ‘new’ sciences of relativity, quantum theory, and chaos theory require subtle minds and the ability to live with paradox, very much an artistic mode of thinking. Artists in turn are seeing their practice more in terms of an enquiry, a subtle but profound shift that is changing the nature of contemporary art practice and funding.

Art and the Spiritual: This relationship can be likened to a centuries-long marriage ending in apparent divorce towards the end of the 19th century. Roger Lipsey, art historian, has suggested that a phrase from Constantin Brancusi, `an art of our own', sums up the desire by 20th century Western artists for emancipation from the `baggage' of religious tradition. Modernism has been shown to have rather surprisingly strong roots in the spiritual and Ascott points out that art always has a spiritual basis whatever the prevailing theoretical fashions. However, we note that the West has a more traumatised relationship with its spiritual heritage than the East does, so, for example, the easy relationship between art and the spiritual in the work of Basho is a lesson readily absorbed. We also note that there is a visible interchange between art and the spiritual in all periods of history. Art provides the spiritual with language and metaphor, poetic expression, and artistic forms for celebration. The spiritual in turn provides subject matter for the artist, or may present propositions about the subjective world (as science does about the objective), that artists engage with.

Science and the Spiritual: if art in the West has struggled to free itself from its religious roles of tradition, then science has had a struggle from its very birth, and almost defines itself against religion. It is not surprising then that the relationship between science and the spiritual is the most contentious of the three relationships discussed here, and that paradoxically there is also the strongest voice for its synthesis. Two dynamics are working here to push forward this synthesis; firstly a triumphant science seeing no reason not to extend its remit and methods into territory traditionally its enemy, and secondly the well-meaning religionists seeking legitimisation for their dwindling faiths. There are of course astonishing parallels between the insights of the great spiritual pioneers and those of the new sciences, but the dangers of pursuing these in a simplistic way is that the scientific, being the dominant mode of thinking, will simply take over the spiritual. Three writers have however, in different ways, argued against this process. Ken Wilber, an evolutionary psychologist, argues for ‘epistemological pluralism’, meaning that the methods of science and the spiritual should be different and separate. John Polkinghorne, quantum scientist at Cambridge, and ordained priest, believes in ‘compartments’, and demonstrates this approach in his own life. Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologist and acclaimed polymath, puts forward the idea of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ based on the insights of many of the great scientists themselves. These thinkers represent an important counter-blast to the synthesisers, but leave open the question, ‘what do we do with these extraordinary parallels?’ The short answer perhaps is to encourage scientists and religionists to genuinely enquire what they can learn from each other. The ancient Greek mystic Heraclitus was known as the ‘obscure’ because of his paradoxical statements, and this is a hallmark of all spiritual pioneers. Since the new physics scientists have to live with paradox, and where better to learn this from than the mystics? In turn the religionists can learn from the history of science that the starting point ‘I don’t know’ is the key that unlocks the door of insight and knowledge – a genuine humility before the facts. The Zen Master is the true genius of ego-deflation, but scientific practice demonstrates a similar humbling of rigid minds before the astonishing subtlety of the manifest universe.

We could say that science at its greatest is a systematic and open-ended inquiry into the objective, whereas the spiritual at its greatest is a systematic and open-ended inquiry into the subjective. Art is a great hall of mirrors that lives between these two extremes, occasionally reaching right into one or other territory, but usually avoiding claims to ‘truth’ and instead focusing on the human, the vulnerable, and the immediate. 

In examining the relationships between art, science and the spiritual, we have seen one strand of thought that pushes towards synthesis, and another that insists on compartmentalisation. ‘Crossovers’ suggests a middle way where we do not enter a distinct territory to conquer it, but become receptive to parallels and differences, impressionable, open-minded and ultimately enriched in our own practice.