Can We Dispense with the Arts?

Abstract

From the inception of the European renaissance and the age of Enlightenment which gave science the ground to blossom and test its methods of inquiry, and science subsequently achieved such monumental success as to transform the society into a place of so much comfort and efficiency, the significance of the arts has contended with the prospect of relegation. The lack of glaring physical products from theorization reminiscent of science has earned art a skeptical and disdainful attitude from people. A philosophical analysis of this issue, however, reveals that this presumptive disdain of the arts is gravely mistaken. Hermeneutical investigation of human existence, for instance, reveals that scientific hypothesizing, which precedes scientific experimentation and invention, must begin with the process of imagination in terms of the picturing of hypothetical reality, which belongs, not to science, but to art, making art a precedent as well as a condition for scientific knowledge.