The Luxury of Art

A clutch of letters in The Guardian has appeared on "the battle between arts and science" – a phoney war surely?  Many of us are the victims of a British educational system that created, around the age of 14, a division into arts and sciences that has been intellectually damaging and, of course, it is scandalous for artistic and literary people to be ignorant of science – or of anything else for that matter.  Although the queasy spectacle of watching Ian McEwan writing about brain surgery in Saturday could in itself constitute an argument for writers not attempting to mug up on science, clearly art and science are fundamental aspects of human knowledge and shouldn't be set against each other.

But one of the Guardian letter writers, Iain Morgan, Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Glasgow, insists that science is necessary, not to further knowledge, but because "without science and technology our country will lag behind others". Moreover – and this is his killer conclusion – "only by science and technology generating inventions and wealth can we afford the luxury of art".  Why do I find this such a miserable conclusion?

Because art is not "a luxury", a by-product of wealth-creation.  Art simply exists, it is. Art is fundamental, necessary, needs no justification, is the element in which sentient, intelligent human beings move like fish in a stream.  It is not a by-product or an incidental consequence of anything. Given the current state of British universities where money-making is the summum bonum, I suppose it is not surprising that such ideas as that of the Prof. flourish.