As a child and family psychiatrist Phillip Romero has been through the mill known as science education. This starts from the philosophical premise that beliefs are supported by logic, reasoning and empirical observation. Sometimes science education makes it difficult for people to have faith in unproven ideas but this appears not to be the case with the doctor who also has an interest in art and in Buddhism.
The discrepancy between art and science is sometimes associated with deductive and inductive thinking. Artists might proceed from a general idea to a particular creation but scientists aim to proceed from the particular to the general. Some scientists tend to appropriate all advances in knowledge to themselves, arguing that scientific method is the only viable way of advancing knowledge. Attempts to examine the barrier between art and science have been quite rare.
Romero is one scientist who has refused to wall himself in behind scientific method. Instead he has accepted the fact that the creation of art has been an aspect of human behavior since the earliest times and has searched for an explanation of why and how art has been a driving passion since so persistently. The motivation behind science is fairly obvious. Scientists seek concrete outcomes and set up means to measure what they observe and achieve. The manufacture and deployment of an atomic bomb has an explicit manifestation. An artistic interpretation of the bomb is less easy to explain.
If 'consilience' is an abstract noun meaning 'a unity of knowledge', then the adjective 'consilient' probably describes an approach that uses different branches of evidence to arrive at the same conclusion. For example the new science of kinaesthetics might use scientific methods to arrive at the same principles that the art of ballet has been practicing since well before someone thought of extending 'physical training' into 'kinaesthetics'.
A reason for the rare use of this word might be that academia is not particularly fond of letting down the curtains around various disciplines. People who have become world experts in arcane fields may have got there by following the strict rules of their discipline. They may not be enthusiastic about consilience, preferring the comfort zones of established disciplines.
One of the greatest benefits of the Internet is that it has diminished to the ability of academics to hide in ivory towers, shooting arrows at intruders who have not been through the accepted initiation rites. Freedom of information and the facilities to browse freely through wide fields of knowledge has pushed consilient approaches forward.
One of the theories that plays a part in Romero's consilient approach is the theory of attachment first put forward by John Bowlby, a development psychologist. He postulated that an infant is in need of a significant relationship in order to pass through a significant phase in intellectual development. This might seem like common sense to many people but in academia the truth is rarely simple or briefly articulated.
Phillip Romero employs a consilient approach in his quest to explain how art is an imperative in human survival. Psychiatric methods, artistic techniques and even religious practice are integrated in the development of closely reasoned conclusions about how art is an imperative in human survival.
The discrepancy between art and science is sometimes associated with deductive and inductive thinking. Artists might proceed from a general idea to a particular creation but scientists aim to proceed from the particular to the general. Some scientists tend to appropriate all advances in knowledge to themselves, arguing that scientific method is the only viable way of advancing knowledge. Attempts to examine the barrier between art and science have been quite rare.
Romero is one scientist who has refused to wall himself in behind scientific method. Instead he has accepted the fact that the creation of art has been an aspect of human behavior since the earliest times and has searched for an explanation of why and how art has been a driving passion since so persistently. The motivation behind science is fairly obvious. Scientists seek concrete outcomes and set up means to measure what they observe and achieve. The manufacture and deployment of an atomic bomb has an explicit manifestation. An artistic interpretation of the bomb is less easy to explain.
If 'consilience' is an abstract noun meaning 'a unity of knowledge', then the adjective 'consilient' probably describes an approach that uses different branches of evidence to arrive at the same conclusion. For example the new science of kinaesthetics might use scientific methods to arrive at the same principles that the art of ballet has been practicing since well before someone thought of extending 'physical training' into 'kinaesthetics'.
A reason for the rare use of this word might be that academia is not particularly fond of letting down the curtains around various disciplines. People who have become world experts in arcane fields may have got there by following the strict rules of their discipline. They may not be enthusiastic about consilience, preferring the comfort zones of established disciplines.
One of the greatest benefits of the Internet is that it has diminished to the ability of academics to hide in ivory towers, shooting arrows at intruders who have not been through the accepted initiation rites. Freedom of information and the facilities to browse freely through wide fields of knowledge has pushed consilient approaches forward.
One of the theories that plays a part in Romero's consilient approach is the theory of attachment first put forward by John Bowlby, a development psychologist. He postulated that an infant is in need of a significant relationship in order to pass through a significant phase in intellectual development. This might seem like common sense to many people but in academia the truth is rarely simple or briefly articulated.
Phillip Romero employs a consilient approach in his quest to explain how art is an imperative in human survival. Psychiatric methods, artistic techniques and even religious practice are integrated in the development of closely reasoned conclusions about how art is an imperative in human survival.