Science Uncovered

Abstract

The study of art in science and science in art can be troublesome. Historians of art who focus on scientific subject matter, like historians of science (and medicine) who deal with visual images, often find themselves in a bind: they can never make both disciplines happy, they can never be confidently versed in the current debates within both fields, and while the more complex methodologies and ideologies of both spheres may be accounted for, the supposedly ‘easy’ fundamentals that are taught in introductory courses are frequently ignored, or maybe never known. It does not help when the words themselves are habitually used in their broadest definitions by the other team, when art is seen to encompass all visual material, or just canonical works, and science is understood as an ahistorical monolithic term that includes its various branches indifferently. Does a historian of science need to know about the hierarchy of genres? Does a historian of art need to know when natural philosophy became science? Yes, and no. On the one hand we should stop seeing these problems as downfalls, but rather as investigations that are freed from having to concentrate solely on their own disciplinary concerns. On the other hand, such omissions and generalities will always remain irksome and make it hard to engage thoroughly with any text or lecture. Plus, there is always the underlying pleasure specialists have in getting annoyed at others who just cannot do what they can – the schadenfreude of art historians at history of science conferences who nod at each other smugly upon hearing a non-specialist mix up a style or, better yet, accept a painting as ‘a mere illustration’. Surely the historians of science are cringing at our cursory accounts of the scientific method too. But the other side of this is that we – the group of art historians who are interested in visual representations of science and in science, and those in scientific disciplines who focus on art and visual culture – are interested in each others' work, want to write convincing histories, and are all up against the same problems that cross-disciplinarity produces.