The Divide Between the Arts and the Sciences: An Approach to Western Culture Based on Vilém Flusser

Abstract

By writing in general terms about the production of art, one of the main objectives of Flusser is to attack a stubborn division of our culture into “two cultures”. According to the author, the artificial separation between science and arts / humanities should be put aside in the interest of a more comprehensive approach to creativity, which means, to the production of ideas, experiences and knowledge. The division between art and science has become deeply rooted in western culture, mostly because it is connected with one of the central goals of our modernity, namely, the capacity of achieving objective knowledge. Of course, science is what has come closer to this ideal of objectivity, and therefore, philosophy, religion, politics and art were disenfranchised as forms of knowledge, for having a small degree of objectivity. As science was transformed into objectivity, the space of subjectivity, of the expression of emotions, remained to be occupied by aesthetics. Flusser argues that objectivity and subjectivity are abstractions in relation to the concrete knowledge, which is always intersubjective. Therefore, under the banner of politics and inter-subjectivity, western culture could solve the atmosphere of absurdity and lack of meaning for life. The restoration of a science informed by art and of an art informed by science, both reconnected with everyday life, could be the key to overcome technocracy.