Do the Arts Convey Truth? A Scientist’s Controversial View

As a scientist, I tend to get labelled an anti-art bigot when I tell my friends that, unlike science, the literary, visual, and performing arts are not about truth. My assertion is greeted with an eyeroll and a shrug of the shoulders, or, by humanities professors, with disdain and opprobrium. To them, I’m just another narrow-minded disciple of the science-as-hegemony school. For example, a discussion of the topic at the Heterodox Academy in June resulted in Louis Menand and John McWhorter telling me, in so many words, to stay in my lane. I’m writing this essay to explain my position.

First I should address the anti-art bigot charge. Just because I see art as a source of something other than the kind of truth uncovered by science does not for a moment mean I’m dismissive of art. My undergraduate education included courses in Greek tragedy, Old English (I can still read Beowulf in the original), modern literature, ethical philosophy, and fine arts, creating in me a desire to keep learning, to keep being inspired, to keep discovering art. I have derived and continue to derive extraordinary pleasure and betterment from art and other branches of the humanities. Science gave me a career, but the arts have given me at least as much in life as science has. But what I’ve gained from art has not been truth.

Let me stop here and define what I mean by “truth.” I am referring to propositional truth, which The Oxford English Dictionary defines as “something that conforms with fact or reality.” Such truths can in principle be shown by empirical study to be either true or false, like the claims that “evolution happened” or “James Joyce was born in Dublin.” Such truths are the main component of “knowledge,” widely defined as “facts verified by a consensus among qualified people.” In contrast, subjective knowledge consists of personal feelings and beliefs that are valid for only one or a few people and can’t be verified empirically (e.g., “this painting is beautiful”). Perhaps we should simply distinguish objective from subjective knowledge. And subjective knowledge is not truth.

Scientists aspire to make their search for truth as objective as possible. We produce evidence for and against our ideas. Evolution might be controversial in the public eye (71 percent of Americans reject it as a purely naturalistic process, believing instead that human evolution involved the hand of God), but it’s not controversial among scientists because a mountain of evidence shows that it “conforms with fact” and thus has been “verified by a consensus among qualified people.”

Such objective knowledge is distinct from debates involving morality, ethics, religion, or politics. These cannot be resolved by conflicting ideas because they depend on personal preferences. Should abortion be banned under all circumstances? Should we have the death penalty? Should we prohibit the sale and eating of meat? There are no “true” answers to these questions because the answers depend on what kind of societies people want—a subjective matter.