The physicist Arthur Zajonc says that our culture needs the artist’s cognitive capacities. But what ARE those cognitive capacities? Perhaps those capacities include the artist’s willingness to be confused, welcoming any unlikely connection that shows up. Perhaps it’s his or her sensitivity to nuance and qualities of beauty that others miss. Perhaps artists are more [ Read more … ]
arthur zajonc
Why do we need art?
I grew up in a hard working Norwegian farming family in the Midwest and not surprisingly, Midwestern practicality is etched into my cells. When I walk into an art gallery, I often marvel at the amount of time someone spent gluing hundreds or thousands of tiny pieces of glass into a sculpture or creating a [ Read more … ]
Do you think like an artist?
“. . . artists are the harbingers of the future mentality required both by science and by the imperatives of living in our precarious times . . . we now truly stand in need, not only as scientists but as a civilization, of the artists’ cognitive capacities,” wrote physicist Arthur Zajonc. From my 20 years teaching [ Read more … ]