“Artistic Scientists and Scientific Artists: The Link Between Polymathy and Creativity”, 2004 (; backlinks):
The literature comparing artistic and scientific creativity is sparse, perhaps because it is assumed that the arts and sciences are so different as to attract different types of minds, each working in very different ways. As C. P. Snow wrote in his famous essay “The Two Cultures”, artists and intellectuals stand at one pole and scientists at the other.
The authors’ purpose here is to argue that Snow’s oft-repeated opinion has little substantive basis. Without denying that the products of the arts and sciences are different in both aspect and purpose, they nonetheless find that the processes used by artists and scientists to forge innovations are extremely similar. Contrary to Snow’s two-cultures thesis, the arts and sciences are part of one, common creative culture largely composed of polymathic individuals.
The authors base their argument on 5 types of evidence that correlate artistic and scientific creativity:
successful artists and scientists tend to be polymaths with unusually broad interests and training that transcend disciplinary boundaries.
artists and scientists have similar psychological profiles as determined by widely used psychological tests.
arts proclivities predict scientific success just as intellectually challenging avocations predict success in all fields.
scientists and artists often describe their creative work habits in the same ways, using the same language, and draw on common, transdisciplinary mental toolkits that include observing, imaging, abstracting, patterning, body thinking, empathizing, and so forth.
scientists often state that their art avocation fruitfully informs their vocation; artists often draw explicit sustenance from their scientific interests. The arts have often stimulated scientific discoveries and science has often influenced the nature of artistic creativity.
These observations have broad implications for our understanding of creativity, intelligence, and education.
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