Protective cocoon
I was talking this morning with a fellow academic who is more in the “art” world than in the “science” planet. We had been discussing the simple fact that for numerous fields (this kind of as my area of personal computer graphics), the distinction in between “artistic study” and “scientific investigation” can be considerably fuzzy. In many situations it is challenging, in the situation of pc graphics, to produce reproducible empirical outcomes or usefully falsifiable ideas (the bedrock elements of science) with no aesthetic exploration or experimentation guided mostly by inspired intuition.
More than the course of the conversation, as my colleague and I talked about the politics of funding in our respective research disciplines, it became clear to me that I’ve been utilizing the “science” label as a type of self-protection. As lengthy as my investigation is officially identified as science, it is classified as practical, beneficial, “good for the financial system”, and therefore fundable.
In essence, I (and a lot of other folks I know) have been making use of the label of science as a protective cocoon, whereas in reality — in the operate as it is actually practiced — a reductive labeling of the investigation as being “art” or “science” would do far more harm than very good.