Editor,
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In the past three years since I’ve adopted the appearance and apparatus of science in my sculptural vocabulary, I’ve noticed some interesting things about the way viewers respond to the authority of those visual references. I discovered how potent the images and constructs of science are in our culture. This has led me to think about the authority of science, and hence, the “authoritarian” cultural voice of science, the notion that some people want to believe in the truthfulness of science so very badly, they feel tricked when encountering something that appears to be science but is in fact art. People want a path to knowledge, and science represents a reliable modern belief system. Mr. Camper’s reaction reinforces my thoughts about the power and authority of the scientific image. Neither science nor art can propose a tyranny of truth. Approximations are commonplace in both. One of the most wonderful gifts art gives us is that it continually challenges our assumptions.
I am glad Mr. Camper used the example of Erwin Schrodinger and would like to add that in addition to his contributions to quantum mechanics, Schrodinger is important in the evolution of scientific thought by controversially pointing out the tendency in science towards reification: “There is a tendency to forget that all science is bound up with human culture in general, and that scientific findings, even those which at the moment appear the most advanced and esoteric and difficult to grasp, are meaningless outside their cultural context. . . . A theoretical science, where this is forgotten, and where the initiated continue musing to each other in terms that are, at best, understood by a small group of fellow travelers, will necessarily be cut off from the rest of cultural mankind; in the long run it is bound to atrophy and ossify however virulently esoteric chat may continue within its joyfully isolated groups of experts” (from Erwin Schrodinger, “Are There Quantum Jumps?” in the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III, pp. 109-10).
Fred Camper replies:
