The discipline called art appreciation serves a needed purpose. There isn’t a discipline called science appreciation, and by that a needed purpose goes unserved. As Alfred K. Mann explains:
The challenge facing scientists is to find a way to convey the essential features, elegance, and simplicity of important works of science so that those features may be appreciated, just as they are appreciated in important works of art. We need a discipline that might be called “science appreciation” to go along with the well-established discipline of art appreciation. . . . For most scientists . . . the desire to have their work better understood is motivated principally by the idea that the culture of science - which they regard as a precious part of the modern age - should be shared with and understood by the society that is immersed in it and yet apart from it. In this they have the same motivation as the artists. (Quoted from Shadow of a Star: The Neutrino Story of Supernova, by Alfred K. Mann, W. H. Freeman & Company, 1987.)
For a brief biography of Alfred K. Mann, click here.
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