A False Chain of Necessity

Are the arts really at the “end of the chain of necessity”? Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review Online argues that they are.

His underlying concern is a legitimate one: too few students studying the sciences.  And he points to John Adams’ writings for support.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

That’s all fine.  Society needs lots of good scientists.  Society also still needs people skilled in the military arts.  (Victor Davis Hanson wrote an excellent column a few years ago on the disastrous effect of expunging military science from the university.)

But Cooke takes his argument too far when he suggests that studying the arts distracts from the study of science.  In fact, the arts curricula at today’s universities are being watered down just like the sciences.  Universities are not teaching art in lieu of science; they are teaching mumbo-jumbo in lieu of truth.

And it is quite likely that we are losing ground in the hard sciences precisely because we no longer take the arts seriously.  Arts education has been in decline for decades primarily because we have stopped taking it seriously.  Daniel Pink argues, however, that arts education is no frill:

[I]n a world where entire industries can disappear seemingly overnight and highly trained workers are made redundant by new technology and outsourcing, arts education isn’t merely a marginally helpful addition to the well-rounded curriculum; it’s an essential rung on the ladder that will lead American workers to full and meaningful employment in fields of the future — a level of preparation that American education does not currently provide.

Classical thinkers knew this and placed music among the seven liberal arts.  Scientists like Pythagoras and Kepler explored the relationship of science and music.  Knowledge of music translates into other scientific skills.  In World War II, for example, the U.S. Navy found that musicians formerly assigned to battleships lost at Pearl Harbor could be excellent code-breakers.

While John Adams made an interesting political point in the quote above, it is a mistake to arrange these disciplines – military, scientific, and artistic – in a neat “chain of necessity” and design a curriculum around it.  Without the arts, there is no culture, and thus nothing to be enriched by science or defended by the military.

Educators take note.  Einstein said, “The greatest scientists are artists as well.”