On art and science

“Strategy is more of an art than a science”; “Picking stocks is more of an art than a science”, “information architecture is more of an art than a science”… You hear this nonsense everywhere. It’s usually a good indication that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

This is not because these people don’t have enough knowledge about the subject matter. They usually don’t. But it’s because they don’t know what art means. They don’t know what science means either.

Science is very simple to understand. It’s the result of the scientific method. When you apply said method, which has very simple rules and procedures, the findings are called science. The degree to which you respected the principles of the method determine how scientific the result is. Observation, hypothesis, test, conclusion, followed by endless efforts to falsify. That’s how science goes. There are no two ways about it.

Art is not as simple to explain. It takes place when someone creates something to derive aesthetic pleasure. Art is art because someone decided that it is, usually but not necessarily, that would be the creator. Art is not the artifact itself. It’s not the canvas or the physical manifestation. It’s the concept, the underlying opinion. That’s why Guernica is art, and a photocopy of Guernica is also art. Art doesn’t have a price but the canvas does.

I said that when people say something is more art that science, it’s a good indication that they don’t know what they’re talking about. But that doesn’t mean they are wrong. They are talking about matters of intuition as opposed to reason. Yes, Art tends to employ more intuition than science does. More art then science means that the rules which govern the subject matter are more intuitive than rational.

Thankfully, in the 21 century, we know that this is a valid form of reasoning. Intuition is not voodoo. In fact, there’s an entire branch of science, real science, that studies this subject. Sources of Power is a book by Gary Klein. I didn’t care for it in the first few chapters. By after having finished it, I don’t think any other book left the same mark on me as did this one. This book taught me how to think about intuition.