Concerning the Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art and Science

A recent proliferation of writings on the spiritual by scientists suggests that this is an appropriate time to reevaluate the spiritual in twentieth-century art. The author looks at three artistic groupings— Wassily Kandinsky and the Bauhaus school, the Abstract Expressionists and the contemporary electronic arts—and traces the influences of various spiritual movements on them. The author then turns to the spiritual in modern science, observing that quantum theory has been the main starting point for many physicists to write about religious ideas. Several issues are examined: whether science at this juncture is more receptive to the spiritual than are the arts; whether art can mediate between science and the spiritual; and whether the spiritual is antecedent to both the arts and science.