The respective role of science and art

This is a difficult subject mixing neurobiology with the interpretation of art. Edward O. Wilson offers, however, a simple distinction between science and art. Science can translate a certain perception into another language. "We [humans] can translate the energies of magnetism and electricity into sight and sound, the sensory modalities we biologically possess. We can read the active neural circuits of bees and fish by scanning their sense organs and brains". By doing so, we can then know what type of perception all species possess assuming that each perception corresponds to a specific and different neural activity.

But what science cannot translate is the feeling of the perception. We will a priori never be able to feel the magnetic and electric perceptions of the bees and fish. We can imagine it. We can study it. But we cannot experience it. "But", as Edward O. Wilson emphasizes, "incapacity is not the point" as art fulfils another role. "Art [...] transmits feelings among persons of the same capacity. In other words, science explains feeling, while art transmits it."

But Wilson wonders "how can we know for sure that art communicates this way with accuracy, that people really, truly feel the same in the presence of art?". My personal answer to this question is: who cares? Do we have to know if the feeling transmitted by art is the same for every person? As long as something is transmitted, as long as art triggers some kind of reaction, a good or a bad feeling, as long as an original message has been sent and received, that is what matters according to me. But this is my usual romantic definition of art. A bit anarchic and maybe too relativistic.

But what if art does transmits the same feeling? what a victory for a universal language. Wilson thinks that it is indeed the case. And how do we know it? "We know it intuitively by the sheer weight of our cumulative responses through the many media of art. We know it by detailed verbal descriptions of emotion, by critical analyses, and in fact through the data from all the vast, nuanced and interlocking armamentaria of the humanities".

A difficult and fascinating subject indeed.

The moon and sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

Some quotations from the wonderfully written The moon and sixpence by Somerset W. Maugham. It is followed by two questions, in need of answer.

"Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour."

(Chapter XIII)

About beauty:

"'Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiviness and imagination'"

(Chapter XIX)

On the difficulty in expressing oneself and being understood:

"Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemmed to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house."

(Chapter XLII)

Once beauty is reached, it has to be destroyed. Neither the artist, nor anyone else can enjoy it again. And in any case beauty can be kept:

"'I think Strickland knew it was a masterpiece. He had achieved what he wanted. His life was complete. He had made a world and saw that it was good. Then, in pride and contempt, he destroyed it.

(Chapter LVII)

Here are my two questions:

1) Why the title The moon and sixpence?

2) The central character of the book is Charles Strickland and his life is loosely inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin. At least, that is what I read everywhere. The story is told by a narrator using the first person, which we might think is Somerset W. Maugham himself. Everything should just be a fiction: Strickland, Maugham's meetings with Strickland, etc. But strikingly, the first chapter refers in footnotes three different books which supposedly describe the life of Charles Strickland. One reference reads:

A modern artist: notes on the work of Charles Strickland, by Edward Leggatt, A.R.H.A. Martin Secker, 1917.

Is this a real reference? And is Charles Strickland then real as well? I was not able to locate any the books, so I am wondering if I am not just the victim of Maugham's ability to push the fiction to such a realism that he does not hesitate to cross the line and violate the fragile convention that footnotes and references are part of reality and out of the fiction. And the joke might just be on me!