Is art as progressive as science?

A few years ago I answered the question in the title of this post in the negative:

It seems to me that human progress is very uneven:

Technology: Very rapid progress
Science: rapid progress

Public Morality: Slow Progress
Sports: slow progress

Human personalities: no progress
Art: No progress

Now I wonder whether this judgment was too hasty. Maybe I was thinking about the issue in the wrong way. In this post I will suggest that I was confusing stocks and flows, and that this distorted my view of the relative progress in these two areas.

To be clear, I understand the argument for why science seems much more progressive than art. Science has made tremendous progress in recent centuries, with many of the most highly regarded artists in music, painting, poetry and theater doing their work hundreds of years ago.

But now I wonder if this is some kind of “apples and oranges” comparison. It seems to me that a field can be judged by its properties stock of performance, or being current of creativity. Thinking back to my earlier post, I believe I was comparing the stock of scientific knowledge to the flow of artistic creativity. Let’s turn those criteria around and use physics as a substitute for science. What happened to the stock of artistic achievement, and what happened to the flow of scientific creativity?

During the first thirty years of the twentieth century, physicists discovered the structure of the atom. They developed the theory of quantum mechanics. They developed the special and general theory of relativity. There were undoubtedly many more discoveries, but these are some of the most important. In applied physics, such as astronomy, important discoveries were also made, including the structure of stars, the existence of galaxies and the expansion of the universe.

Unless I am mistaken, there have been no discoveries of this importance in the past thirty years, although progress continues to be made in many areas. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the ‘flow of creativity’ one could argue that physics is in decline and that its greatest achievements have occurred many years in the past. Who is today’s Einstein?

Now let’s look at artistic knowledge from a “stock perspective.” I would argue that the art world is significantly advanced from where it was 100 years ago, and vastly ahead of where it was 200 years ago. This progress has taken several forms:

1. New artists are constantly appearing on the scene, adding to our stock of artistic creations. Paintings like those of Picasso Guernica did not exist 100 years ago. If you go back 200 years, there were no entire styles like Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

2. Our understanding of the art field has improved from where it was in centuries past. Vermeer’s paintings existed in the mid-19th century, and were not entirely unknown to art connoisseurs. And yet most art experts lacked the ability to appreciate its greatness. Today, even people with only a bachelor’s degree in art history can appreciate Vermeer. Many more examples could be cited, especially as you move forward in time towards the present. For example, Vermeer was ‘discovered’ in 1890 and yet Van Gogh remained undiscovered.

Goethe was one of the greatest minds of the early 19th century. In his book entitled Italian trip, he shows what an excellently educated European could have known about painting in 1816. And yet I suspect that I know even more about painting than Goethe. That’s not because I have a better mind, but because I stand on the shoulders of giants and look out over a field of knowledge that has expanded dramatically over the past 200 years. By comparison, a college sophomore majoring in physics might very well know more physics than Isaac Newton.

So why the perception that art is declining while science is advancing? I see several possible reasons:

1. A lot of abstract art and atonal music don’t make sense to most people. But it is also true that quantum mechanics and relativity are meaningless to most people. Given enough time and progress, every area of ​​human endeavor will go beyond the comprehension of most people.

2. But people are willing to accept models like quantum mechanics and relativity if they are told that these models underlie the technology that leads to things like lasers or iPhones. For this reason, science is more respected than art. But the fact that people who do not understand both fields accepting either as a matter of faith is hardly a good argument for the claim that science is more progressive than art.

3. People have a double standard. They judge art based on the flow: how does the flow of good new art compare to the flow of good new art in previous eras? In science they look at the accumulated stock of knowledge, which is generally increasing. That’s a double standard in favor of science.

In my opinion, most traditional fields of art and science are well past their ‘golden age’. Rapid progress tends to occur when new techniques open up possibilities for creativity – the knowledge equivalent of the Oklahoma land grab, where people rushed to take land that suddenly became available. In science, techniques such as genome deciphering have recently enabled major advances in our understanding of how and where ancient peoples migrated. Fields of science without new techniques tend to eventually stagnate. In art, painting has stagnated and filmmaking has become the most vibrant visual art over the past hundred years.

In my own field (macroeconomics), things seem to have deteriorated in recent decades. Fewer economists seem to understand that low interest rates do not mean you can make money easily. Fewer economists seem to understand that fiscal stimulus is largely ineffective due to monetary compensation. Fewer economists seem to understand that the Fed determines long-term inflation. Fewer economists seem to understand that trade barriers do not improve the economy. Macro is declining in both an equity and flow sense.