Art Doesn’t Progress, it Varies

Not only do the results of scientific experiments confirm discoveries but the knowledge gained is accumulative such that further theories may be formulated and new experiments devised for testing them. Science makes progress in a way that no other field of human endeavour can equal, and this sets a challenge for art since the criteria used to evaluate art are predicated upon many of the very same assumptions as are applied to science, one of the most pervasive and misdirected being the idea that artists and the work they produce should improve. Art, according to this logic of achievement, must make progress.

One of the major contributors to this mindset would seem to be the fact that art has adopted and inherited a significant number of the core terms used to describe and evaluate science. Art involves research, development, exploration, experiment, discovery, inquiry, insight, knowledge and so forth and this sets up an expectation that art can, or indeed should, deliver results on the same basis or according to the same principles.

A few days ago James Atherton linked to a wonderfully iconoclastic and enlightening paper by the philosopher Eric Dietrich, entitled "There is no Progress in Philosophy". Dietrich makes an extremely persuasive case that philosophy has made no progress at all since the days of Aristotle:

“Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with.”

Applying the same arguments to art we find that the case is almost identical: art makes no progress whatsoever. Atherton goes on to speculate whether we might also question the progress of literature and the humanities in general and he also, quite rightly, reminds us that the humanities are already threatened in the academy. How could this be otherwise when compared with the formidable and measurable achievements of STEM subjects?

If a whole raft of disciplines have been found to lack some seemingly essential ingredient, perhaps rather than doubting the validity or contribution of these subjects we should instead examine both the validity and applicability of this required essence as applied to them. We might also do well to more accurately determine what goods we believe the humanities actually bestow upon the world and to ensure that we confidently champion these when faced with demands for such things as “new knowledge” and “progress”. Atherton makes a brief but brilliant connection here by introducing Michael Oakeshott's "The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind" (1962). The same was quoted –understandably - by the late Richard Rorty in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (where I first encountered it as a student) and is a fabulous piece of nuanced thinking that deserves to be read in full. Here’s a lengthy extract:

“In a conversation the participants are not engaged in an inquiry or a debate; there is no 'truth' to be discovered, no proposition to be proved, no conclusion sought. ... Of course, a conversation may have passages of argument and a speaker is not forbidden to be demonstrative; but reasoning is neither sovereign nor alone, and the conversation itself does not compose an argument. . . . In conversation, 'facts' appear only to be resolved once more into the possibilities from which they were made; 'certainties' are shown to be combustible, not by being brought in contact with other 'certainties' or with doubts, but by being kindled by the presence of ideas of another order; approximations are revealed between notions normally remote from one another. ... Nobody asks where they have come from or on what authority they are present; nobody cares what will become of them when they have played their part. There is no symposiarch or arbiter, not even a doorkeeper to examine credentials. Every entrant is taken at its face-value and everything is permitted which can get itself accepted into the flow of speculation. And voices which speak in conversation do not compose a hierarchy. Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, not is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure. … It is the ability to participate in this conversation, and not the ability to reason cogently, to make discoveries about the world, or to contrive a better world, which distinguishes the human being from the animal and the civilized man from the barbarian.” [my emphasis]

Is it not enough that art, the humanities and culture in general should contribute to - constitute even - this very discourse? For Richard Rorty this constant comparison and contestation of perspectives leads to a kind of discursive distillation whereby the most appropriate framework for the current moment emerges. Recently Hugo Mercier of the University of Pennsylvania and Dan Sperber of the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris have advance a very similar conclusion with their “argumentative theory” of reason:

“Reasoning is made for arguing. Because of this people have a strong confirmation bias that plagues lone reasoners. But when people argue, the biases of the arguers can balance each other out and lead reasoning to felicitous outcomes. Let’s reason together!”

Culture is a framework or lens through which we view the world. It informs our thinking and gives complexion to our ideas and expressions. Without exposure to other cultures though, it becomes practically impossible to recognise, let alone fully appreciate, our own perspective upon the world for the contingent and partial thing that it is. Our desire then should not be to progress to a single ‘perfect’ homogenised global culture but rather to share and experience the profound and subtle interplay of diverse perspectives, tastes and interpretations. This is why a diversity of cultures is so valuable to society, since monoculture discourages discourse and reinforces monotony and dogma. A good analogy here might be to think of cuisine. With all things culinary, we enjoy - and therefore crave - variety as much as perfection itself. If perfection were the only measure we sought in food then we’d be perfectly happy eating the same perfectly balanced meal ad infinitum. But where aesthetic matters are concerned variety is not just the spice of life, as the cliché goes, but its very substance.