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Scientists weaving an incredible story, invented an extraordinary hypothesis, and demanded difficult issues, the meaning of life. They are the work of view, we have the physical and mental challenges, and how we construct our identity and self.             Science as Art       Contemporary scientists often talk about ‘beauty’ and ‘elegance’; artists hardly ever do. Scientists weave incredible stories, invent extraordinary hypotheses and ask difficult questions about the meaning of life. They have insights into the workings of our bodies and minds which challenge the way we construct our identities and selves. They create visual images, models and scenarios that are gruesome, baffling and beguiling. They say and do things that are ethically and politically challenging and shocking. Is science the new art?   Contrary to the claims of some in the science community, the public is better informed about contemporary science than it is about contemporary art. Scarcely a news bulletin passes which does not contain the words ‘scientists have discovered that…’ followed up with accessible explanations. All schoolchildren in the West (unless they live in Creationist Kansas) must compulsorily learn the basics of genetics, chemistry and physics. Our television and movie fictions glamorize medicine and forensic science; we relish and revere the slick clinical jargon of ER and Casualty and their crash crises, instant diagnoses and gorily authentic-looking body parts. Even small children can be knowledgeable about the appearance and function of a gerbil’s kidneys and the gynecology and obstetrics of cows, thanks to Animal Hospital and the prime-time viewing of vet documentaries. ‘Nature’ programs attract huge viewing figures. General practitioners regularly encounter patients who come to the surgery with self-made diagnoses, full of technical information acquired from the Internet. Moreover, we subscribe to the purity and implicit justice of the scientific method, with its emphasis on the primacy of impartial evidence, which has become so much a part of the police detective and forensic science fiction and films we seem obsessed with. Logical argument and rational expression, together with a Gradgrindian respect for ‘facts’, are paramount in public and political discourse and the arts constituency itself must justify its existence through a semblance of order which involves the continual making of strategies, audits and statistical surveys, even to the extent of identifying rules and conditions which govern the nature of that hallowed term ‘creativity’. And, while scientific ideas are intelligently aired every day, art is not explained or discussed on its own terms except as an end-of-the-news item where it is likely to be derided for its apparently infantile sensationalism or its knee-jerk irony, or vaguely revered for its decorativeness, or its hints at some kind of inaccessible sanctity. We are much more likely to be seriously persuaded, moved, worried or enchanted by science.         —  Sian Ede,  Art & Science             Indexes/02