Philosophy and Literature

The publication of Edward Wilson’s Consilience over a decade ago (1998) led to renewed discussion about the relationship between the sciences, humanities, and fine arts. Particularly, how should science and art be defined, and their relationship understood? I propose that extending Willard Quine’s work on science, and theories of art proposed by Oscar Wilde, Jorge Luis Borges, Arthur Danto, Hans Belting, and Denis Dutton, can provide for a richer concept of consilience between science and art than that proposed by Wilson, suggesting important components for definitions of a scientific and artistic method, and how theories of science and art could be linked in the future.