Art, Religion, Science

I have been thinking about the differences and similarities between science, art, and religion, for a long time, and I am still not quite there, but I think it is safe to say that all three are in search of answers, albeit of very different types. Science searches for general, hopefully objective truths in the form of verifiable facts of the external world. Art does something similar, but its gaze is mostly inward (our perception of and reaction to the world around us), and it revels in individual, subjective answers. Religion could perhaps be seen as an intermediate between the two, and to a certain extent as a precursor of both.

There are heavier and lighter versions of each (true science vs. popular science, avant-garde art vs. retro), and each have a "pseudo"-variant, characterized a high percentage of false or incorrect answers, less rigorous methodology, and often by ulterior motives that are absent from the more serious variants (see also my entry Keeping an open mind). Pseudo-science includes astrology, pseudo-religion sects, and pseudo-art is art that expresses fake or simulated feelings (e.g. in poetry).

And all three have creative and less creative variants.True science and art are still very creative, and proactively so, applied science and craftsmanship much less so. Religion was very innovative for a long time, is mostly reactive these days, responding to societal changes, but not anticipating them, and certainly not driving them, although a case could be made that new age spirituality is taking the place of traditional organized religions.

And last but not least, all three can be corrupted by allowing money to play too big a role ...

There are even hybrids between the three, but I will leave that for another day.

Devaluation blues

All around me I see signs of the second law of thermodynamics - the one that says that things have a tendency to lose steam, run down, decay - expressed in human society. The examples that spring immediately to mind are schooling, money, words, and food, each of which seem to be worth less with the passing of time. But in fact, each case is very different.

First of all, I think that schooling is on the whole and in the longer run probably not getting worse, as everybody loves to say ("in my time, ..."), but better. Yes, there will be temporary ups and downs (in the order of magnitude of years, decades, and even generations), but collectively we know more now than a hundred years ago, and much more than several thousands of years ago, and schooling has definitely played a part in this. (This is by the way not contrary to the second law of thermodynamics: it acknowledges the existence of local anomalies, all it is concerned with is the the entropy of the system as the whole).

As for money (and the price of houses), its value goes up and down too. Of course, it has gone down now for a very long time, but this, I think, is linked to the fact that our economy is almost completely built on the idea that you have to grow to survive, which in fact is not necessarily true. There is also such a thing as stasis, and it might be good if we were to embrace that idea.

I already mentioned the devaluation of words in a previous entry, although I was talking specifically of curse words. But the same happens to any emotionally charged word, such as those indicating race, ethnic origin, culture, sexual orientation, etc. In the west, we have been obsessed with this long before the term "political correctness" was coined, as is evidenced by the long succession of names for migrant workers in Dutch society over the past fifty or sixty years.

And then we have food (and other consumables), which is suffering from the entropy of over-processing. It is like "overproducing" a record: there comes a point when every attempt at improving something just makes it worse. And I think we reached that point with food quite a while back. Here is my personal things-I-love-to hate list: decaf coffee, low-tar low-nicotine cigarettes, beer without alcohol, cola without sugar, hamburgers without fat, mayonnaise without eggs. (I could go on, but I am beginning to lose my appetite).

Last but not least, life itself is becoming less sacred. The Catholic Church may not yet realize it, but we have come to the point where having humongous families is no longer an option, or at least, not for all of us (I recently read that having large families is becoming a status symbol among rich American suburbanites, but I imagine this is just another local anomaly, which will iron itself out in the end).