Art, Science and Technology

Leonurdo,Vol. 5, pp. 165-168. PergamonPress 1972. Printed in Great Britain ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY* Andre Jaumotte** I. THE ART OF THE ENGINEER It seemsnormal to me to reflect on the relationships between art, science and technology because one speaks of ‘theart of the engineer’,so aptlyjustified by the writer Paul ValBry who wrote: ‘They must take charge of men, mould and combine materials, and find satisfactory solutions for unexpected problems involving the contrary demands of economics and civil and natural laws. This sort of reasoning on complex systems hardly lends itself to the assumption of a general form. There are no formulae which cover these individual cases, no equations possible between these heterogeneous groups of data; littlecan be donewith certainty,and even to feel one’s way ahead is only lost time unless one is guided by a very subtle sense of direction. In the eyes of an observer able to disregard appearances , this activity, this tense waiting, these reflected hesitations and sudden discoveries might justly be comparedto the inner moments of a poet. But I am afraid that very few engineers suspect themselves of being as near as I suggest to the inventors of figures and adjusters of words ...’ [l]. Such are the great builders, truly creators. It is man’s nature to associate the love of materialswith the impulsesof the mind. Scientistsand engineers, when they experiencethe momentsof discoveryand invention, are truly brothers of the artist. Creative moments are bestowed upon but very few persons. Their new ideas are then taken over by developers and replicators, whose efforts are so necessary for spreadingthe ideas far and wide. The gap between the so-called humanities and science and technology has been analyzed by Snow [2] and many others. This problem of the ‘two cultures’does not includethe creativeprocess itself, which is common to all these activities of man, but it arises through a lack of understanding of their differentpurposes and results [3]. * Based on the lecture presented on the occasion of the opening of the October 1971 session of the University of Brussels, Belgium. (Originali n French.) **Mechanical engineer, Rector of the University of Brussels, 50 Av. F. D. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. (Received 1 October 1971.) I I . A BRIEF HISTORICAL REVIEW Theeighteenthcenturyhasbeen calledthe century of the inventionof libertyin Europe [4]. It wasthen that the visual arts began to treat more frequently historical rather than religious subjects but only for a short time, for painters and sculptors became interested again in realism, in portraying nature as it appears to the eye. There are several good rules of proportion based on nature. The most commonone used is called the ‘ported’harmonie’*,itistheratio of thelengthof the side of a square to its diagonal (i.e., 1 to 4 2 or 1to 1-414).Thisratio isutilizedby the most humble artisan. Painters use it for the shape of a canvas called ‘landscape’format. The ‘golden section’involves the number 5. The sectionisthe ratio of the sideof the regularpentagon to the side of the five-pointed ‘star constructed within it (i.e., 1to 1.618). The ratio was used by the designersofthe Egyptianpyramidsand of the Greek temples and it is still used today for the proportions of art papers and canvases, however, it is slowly being replaced by other proportions. The master artists of the Renaissance made frequent use of the golden section and, in our day, Le Corbusier based his modulor on it. The artist tried to imitatethe retinalimpressionof colors that correspond to the spectrum of colors of solar light reflected by objects. Of course, it is a mental image of objects that the artist responds to, still, the image is moulded by the colors nature provides. With the arrival of the Impressionists, the paths of artists and scientists were joined again but the results they obtained were achieved independently. Chevreul, a scientist, discovered the laws of the simultaneouscontrast of colors and Monet applied them for the first time in his picture ‘Femmes au Jardin’. The following ‘Neo-impressionists’ introduced the idea of the separation of colors. Paul Signac explained it [5] and it was quickly adopted. An early picture incorporating the idea was ‘Un * In French in the text. 165...