Freedom, and the struggle involved in attaining and preserving it,
is one of the most fundamental themes in human history. Especially in the
United States, its invocation conjures heroic images of leaders like Dr.
King or Washington. And even in scientific history, there is a vague
feeling of advancing freedom, be it from restricting Aristotelian models
or strict religious supervision. And yet, in the modern day, much of the
actual freedom available to a scientist has been voluntarily waived.
Science now suffers under a self imposed kind of isolation from its
brethren fields of study. No more do we find da Vincis who span all
aspects of human knowledge tying artistic creativity to mechanical
ingenuity. At least, we dont find them frequently or overtly. Scientific
papers are dry and devoid of the kind of literary embellishment or
philosophical reflection that characterized early science. Science has
built up a barrier around itself to maintain its credibility, but in doing
so has unduly confined itself. From examples of early science, we can see
that this was not always the case. Perhaps it is possible to reincorporate
science into the rest of human endeavor. By examining the very beginnings
of the schism between science and art, we can hope to identify remedies
and bridges.
     One of the most fundamental limitations on the freedom of science
is one that is implicitly imposed by the very nature of science itself.
This is nothing more or less than the restriction to what is true. It is
just automatically expected that science will deal with authentic
phenomena of the world in which we live. It is from this very simple and
seemingly sensible foundation that the whole of the great barrier between
science and other fields is built. Neither does it appear that such should
not be the case what would science be worth if it did not tell us about
the real world? Here we can observe the fundamental aspects of the schism
between art and science: it is almost impossible for us to even imagine
what science would be if it were not about the truth. But by probing
through our own rigid connotations of what science fundamentally is, we
can arrive at something that is more essential to science even than the
pursuit of natural truth: curiosity. By distilling even modern practical
science down to such a fundamental human characteristic, we can see how
far we have gone in perverting the goals of science with our own
definitions. Discovering the way in which things work be they sub-atomic
particles, imagined cultures, individual personalities, or even Gods
motives is the fundamental aspect of every branch of human thought. In
this perspective, it is wondrous that literature and the pursuit of
understanding through the creation and analysis of fictions should be so
far flung from physics and the pursuit of understanding through creation
and analysis of experiments. What are experiments if not fictional
circumstances? What are fictions if not experiments of circumstances?
     And yet, even with such a fundamental identity between art and
science, we must come back to the practical question. What good would
science be if it did not discourse in actualities? The answer may be the
same that can be given in defense of creative art: by exploring what is
not, or what exists only in the imagination, we are better prepared to
deal with what may be, or what we do not recognize in ourselves. But even
with such a defense, it is hard to imagine what science would be if it
were not ultimately concerned with actual truth. Perhaps the example of
science fiction gets close to what science could be without its bond to
reality. At least as far back as Cavendish and her Blazing World, there
has been such a (sometimes tacit) connection between wild imagination and
ordered understanding. And indeed, all fictional worlds follow some kind
of scientific ordered understanding, even if that understanding is that
there will be no rules in the created world. But here we are constructing
science to be something that it presently is not, and it is our objective
to analyze how real science could change. In looking for remedies, it is
of the utmost importance to carefully identify and define the disorder.
But because we live in a society where the disorder is everywhere the
norm, we will be at a great disadvantage in distinguishing what is wrong.
Therefore, it will be beneficial to make a more specific analysis of how
modern science has waived its own inborn freedoms compared to earlier 17th
century science.
     An especially demonstrative aspect of limitations in science is
scientific writing. There are several forms and rules that scientists
confine themselves to when composing a piece of scientific literature. One
of the most striking is the almost complete absence of any personal
references. High school science courses emphasize over and over the harsh
punishments for ever using a personal pronoun in a lab report. Indeed
there is a profound shortage of any kind of pronouns in scientific
writing. This is understandable based on our perception of scientists.
Specifically, we charge science with maintaining generalities about nature
phenomena that are always observed as the result of a particular
circumstance. The statements we expect of science are sovereign regardless
of where, when, and even how the circumstances are brought about. And most
especially, scientific truths should be independent of who conducts the
experiment and who observes it. This idea seems completely natural to us,
but natural phenomena were not always regarded as so universal.
 Take the alchemists, for example. They believed that their own
moral state could influence the results of their experiments. This belief
is seen in The Alchemist, when Sir Epicure Mamon is fooled into thinking
that his own lustful thoughts for Dol Common had somehow ruined Subtles
attempt to procure a philosophers stone (Johnson). The belief shows a
common trend in many older systems of thought: the invisible sympathies
between all parts of nature. Even more than that though, it demonstrates
incredulous nature of selfish (and therefore personal) motivation. In
order to avoid these kinds of questionable circumstances, modern science
has devoid itself of all kinds of personal reference. If it does not seem
there is any very personally catering Face or Subtle, then maybe this will
add to the credibility of science.
     The beginning of this move of science into the realm of impersonal
credibility can be seen hidden in the writings of Bacon. Bacon advocated
that all natural philosophers go out and experience the laws of nature
instead of reading about and restating outdated models. And though this
position implicitly includes the personal nature of experience, the
essential faith that all experimentalists would come to the same
conclusions about the world indicates a belief in the impersonality of
scientific exploration. Bacon wanted others to go out and experience
nature because he knew they would have the same kinds of experiences he
had, and would be able to verify or expand upon his own theory. Even the
style in which Bacon wrote, that of collected aphorisms instead of prose,
shows a hint of the impersonal nature of science to follow. Truths did not
need to be collected and placed in pretty, ordered paragraphs for the
reader. Rather, truths existed on their own, independent of each other or
how (and by whom) they were perceived. In fact, Bacons distaste for the
literature of established natural philosophy probably led in a large way
to many of the self imposed limitations of modern scientific writing.

And the plot of this our theater [of scientific writing] resembles those
of the poetical, where the plots which are invented for the stage are more
consistent, elegant, and pleasurable than those taken from real history.
(Bacon 67)

Over and over Bacon criticized earlier natural philosophers for assuming
too much or inventing order where there was none. It is no wonder that
after such harsh criticism, modern science strives to be very precise and
impersonal. But this is somewhat lamentable, since it has had the effect
of alienating many readers. It is impossible to emotionally relate to a
modern scientist in the same way as one can relate to the protagonist in
any other form of literature. And it is this lack of relation that has led
to the division of scientists from everyday people.
     Interestingly, the discovery of relativity and the importance of
frame of reference has forced modern science to reevaluate the
significance of the actual observer in science. It would seem that no one
has exactly the same experience, everything depends on the relative speeds
and character of the observer and the object. This is an idea that has
been taken up and embraced in popular literature and culture (albeit, in a
crude modification). It rings true with our modern sense of individuality
and the importance of whose perspective one takes. And in a great leap of
assumption, science has almost altogether ignored this revelation. The
invention of a universal rest frame, from which everything can be judged
uniformly, has allowed science to continue along without pondering the
social and personal implications of Einstein theory.
     Another very remarkable feature of professional scientific writing
is the utter lack of literary embellishment. By this I mean that
scientific literature has none of the figurative and symbolic language or
colorful and imaginative descriptions that are found in art. While this is
not necessarily so true about low level text books or articles intended
for the uninitiated, it is certainly true about scientists own internal
communication. Nowhere in a trade journal will you ever find a metaphor.
Once again, this observation is the result of sciences preoccupation with
preserving its universality and truth.
     Perhaps the metaphor is an unfair example to use against science,
since by their very nature, metaphorical statements include a kind of lie.
To say something so absurd as All the world is a stage in scientific
writing is heresy. Every good scientist know that the earth is an
approximately spherical mass composed mostly of iron and nickel that
rotates on its axis as it revolves around the sun. But Shakespeare would
have been guilty of modern scientific heresy for more than just his
outright lie, even the meaning of the metaphor is contrary to scientific
thought. As we saw before, the scientific mind requires that world behave
in the same way for every person not being staged individually for each
of us. More than that, scientists no doubt see themselves as the
directors, strategically planning experiments to have nature, not
themselves, act out intended roles.
     Despite the appearance that metaphor is so fundamentally opposed
to science, we know that early scientific writers did use clever
metaphors, even as a tool of science. A prime example is the terrella of
Gilbert realizing that he could not hope to experiment on the entire
earth, Gilbert conjectured that he could instead experiment on a similar
spherical magnet floating in his tub. The results, he implicitly claimed,
would be applicable to the entire earth. This is a marvelously powerful
tool for scientific exploration. Hooke used it when he described something
as remote as the moon in terms of something as common as a vat of
alabaster. But this method has largely been set aside by modern science
writers. Even if the models they maintain in their own minds are metaphors
of a kind, it would be considered very poor style to include such
inaccurate depictions in a formal paper. Even Einstein conducted thought
experiments about how each photon was like its own little world, but the
helpful images never find their way into the official literature of
science. Instead, scientific knowledge has been maintained as a grand
monolith to be understood only by the initiated clergy of science.
     Even beyond the perhaps special case of metaphor, other figurative
language is still strictly avoided. Certainly irony and hyperbole suffer
from the same kind of problem with outright falsehood that metaphor did,
if not to an even greater degree. To become excited and exaggerate
something, even for the benefit of understanding, shows a kind of weakness
in a scientist. But even the more mild simile and synechdoche seem to
imply that the object under discussion cant be understood without some
kind of relation to something else more common. This is distasteful to a
scientist, who wants his theories to be fully independent of personal
experience. By implying a connection to common experience, the scientist
sees his theory as somehow compromised. This goes back to Bacon again.

[Older theories,] being deduced from a few instances, and these
principally of familiar occurrence, immediately hit the understanding,
and satisfy the imagination; whilst, on the contrary, [modern theories,]
being deduced from various subjects, and these widely dispersed, cannot
suddenly strike the understanding; so that, in common estimation, they
must appear difficult and discordant, and almost like the mysteries of
faith. (Bacon 50)

We see a kind of praise of complexity. If something is simple, it is to be
looked down upon as common and too easily satisfying. Only in the most
obscure and convoluted explanations can real truth be found. What could
possibly be more elitist? Though Bacons contribution to the evolution of
science was profound, many of the ways he set about doing it have forever
blockaded science in its own often incomprehensible labyrinth of theories.
By excluding common experience and any figurative relation to it, he had
effectively struck the first blow between scientists and the common man.
     We begin to see another great limitation that science has
unwittingly imposed on itself: the isolation of its influence to
particular fields. Even though natural philosophy has never been the
stomping ground of every common Joe, it did certainly have a broader reach
in previous centuries. If we like, we could go all the way back to
Aristotle and examine how his natural philosophy, though primitive, was
intimately connected with his logic and even his ideas about how to
construct tragedies. Understandably, his natural philosophy needed
modifications to remain consistent with the ideas of forms and logical
progression, and for this kind of perversion of science, he earned Bacons
rebuff. Indeed, it was one of Bacons great goals to make natural
philosophy an independent branch of study, free from the circular
argumentation and repetition that pervaded other philosophies and
especially religious or dogmatic discussions. The unfortunate effect was
to draw science into itself, retreating from broader culture. A new and
profoundly different culture of science slowly developed and emerged from
within the existing culture.

Its members do not not always completely understand each other; but there
are common attitudes, common standards and patterns of behavior, common
approaches and assumptions. In their working and in much of their
emotional life, their attitudes are closer to other scientists than to
non-scientists who [otherwise] have the same [social] labels as
themselves. Without thinking about it, they respond alike. That is what a
culture means. (Snow 10)

With science providing its own nourishing culture, it became acceptable
for the scientist to no longer delve into what the other side was
interested in. A vast chasm of mutual incomprehensibility began to split
the scientists from the rest of the world not just the artistic
intellectuals, but also the common man.
     The size of the gulf between science and popular culture is
especially startling in modern times. Though historical examples like the
Luddites are perhaps more remarkable in their outright violence,
contemporary film gives a striking image of what science is perceived as.
There are interminable examples of out of control experiments brought on
us by a proud and self concerned science. The fledgling artificial
intelligence always takes over the world and subjugates humanity. The
biologist is always genetically engineering better sharks, dinosaurs, or
other monsters. The mathematician is always breaking top secret encryption
codes. And the physicist is always building a better bomb. That these
should be frightening prospects and that movies could be made out of them
is not surprising. What is startling and lamentable is that the scientist
is hardly ever the protagonist. The scientist is not the hero he or she
used to be. Rather, science is an unknown. Another example of the other
that can be exploited as frightening and villainous in and of itself,
simply by lack of understanding.
     The reason it is lamentable is that it has not always been this
way. Certainly from Hooke and the Royal Society, we get a feeling of how
science was fashionable. Gentlemen, businessmen, and politicians could
dabble in natural philosophy without becoming a member of another culture.
And even from the writing of the time, Bacon was portrayed as a heroic
figure. Thomas Sprat, for example, was utterly consumed with how marvelous
a star Bacon was: "In this one Man I do at once find enough occasion to
admire the strength of humanee Wit and to bewail the weakness of a Mortal
condition" (Sprat 161). Today, there is hardly even a scientist (much less
someone of another field) that would spread such lavish praise on a
scientist a result of both the scientific ideal of sober and
unenthusiastic research and the common incomprehension of science.
 And as if this were not enough, there is even a move among
scientists to further isolate themselves from their fellow scientists.
Science is becoming so complicated that it is more and more impossible to
keep tabs on all areas at once. Specialization, though providing an
enormous freedom to scientists to explore their own field in excruciating
depth, has also limited them from making connections with other fields of
science. Even as freedom is attained for one area, it is lost in many
others.
     One related comparison we can draw between modern professional
science and early gentlemanly science is the degree of independence
exercised by scientists. Modern scientists, by the nature of being
professionals, must do work for someone else. Their goals are often
dictated to them by supervisors. This is especially true in industrial
situations, where the bottom line is what really matters, not the pursuit
of any fascinating new area of study. Even at universities and research
institutes, there is corporate and government funding and involvement that
leans heavily on researchers to pursue specific interests. This is a great
departure from the days of Bacon, when science was conducted by privileged
men who had no other apparent alliance except to the truth. But perhaps it
is a good thing that government and industry have taken an interest in
science. Perhaps here is where the first bridges can be constructed back
to the broader culture. It must be feared, however, that businessmen will
be interested only in the monetary benefits of research and not interested
in its actual progress. The relegation of science to a piteous role of
productive engagement, and not also something higher, can be seen
profoundly in the case of NASA. Always a government agency, NASA has
always been required to demonstrate its own usefulness to society in order
to survive. In its early history, this demonstration was easy in the
context of the space race, but in more recent history, NASA has suffered
some of the largest government cutbacks because pure science (which is
essentially all that remains without the competition of the Russians),
doesnt seem productive. Even if the long term benefits of further research
are recognized by political leaders, they by necessity must come second to
the more immediate demands of welfare. So modern science is encountering a
great reversal in its role: it is no longer a self sustaining interest of
the privileged, but a dependent function of organizations interested in
other things.
     It is amazing that science, even with all these limitations,
continues to thrive and produce copiously. The great walls of devout
impersonality and sobriety have not so completely shut science away from
the real world as might have been expected. This is probably due to the
great freedoms that science has maintained for itself and not squandered
away. Unlike some of the lost freedoms described above, these retained
freedoms are almost fundamental to the progress of science.
 One of the foremost freedoms in science is the ability to be
creative even in the contexts of exploring fixed laws. Even if scientists,
in their characteristic ignorance of creative arts, do not realize the
imaginative nature of their work, it is undeniably a primary feature of
science as a whole. The history of science has been organized around and
driven by ingeniously devised experiments that at once show a deep
understanding of the way the world works and an enormous leap of fantasy.
Take, for example, Thompsons oil drop experiment. By atomizing droplets of
oil and charging them with electricity, Thompson could suspend them in
midair by use of an electric field. More than that, he could vary the
electrical field and watch as some droplets floated to one plate or
another. The genius comes in then applying gravitational theory to deduce
the exact force that held the oil drops constant, and from there
calculating the charge that resided on each oil drop as it interacted with
is electric field. At last, by examining the data so obtained, a quantum
number for the charge on a single electron could be deduced. The invisible
world of the electron could be probed through clever manipulation of very
visible interactions. It is a story that reads almost like a clever
mystery novel or a short story.
     I propose that it is the same kind of abundant knowledge and
imaginative powers that guide experimental design as guide the composing
of a good story. The intricate details of the inner workings of the
physical universe must be well understood and ingeniously synthesized to
produce a good experiment in the same way that the inner workings of a
mind and an understanding of society must be synthesized to create any
good literature. This creative freedom in science always seems to be at
risk with the current division between creative arts and scientific arts,
but it has always been such an integral part of scientific advancement
that it is unlikely to every really be subdued.
     The second remarkable freedom in scientific thought is its ability
to overarch everything. A good scientist, even though he may not truly
understand a phenomena, will never be at a lack for a hypothesis and
proposed test of that hypothesis. Even in the cases of extraordinary
occurrences, the encompassing nature of scientific thought will attempt an
explanation and an incorporation of the wonder into the existing framework
of known physical laws. An interesting consequence of this freedom is that
science has been able to discuss even that which it constructs as its
antithesis and incomprehensible. Sciences like sociology or psychology,
though they deal in areas fundamentally distinct from classical natural
philosophy, deal with their subjects with the same curiosity and
experimental mind set that more stereotypical scientists deal with their
fields. And though psychology and its brethren pseudosciences are not
generally accepted under the umbrella of science, the connection is most
certainly there. Even without this chasm bridging grasp at understanding,
the freedom derived from the universality of science is profound. From the
first stretches of Gilbert and Hooke in understanding entire planets and
minuscule organisms, to the the huge leaps of Hawking and Schrodinger in
understanding the beginnings of the entire universe and the fundamental
workings of the smallest particles, a great power and freedom of science
becomes evident: that of building on itself and reaching farther and
farther from common experience. In the ideal, there is nothing that
science cannot discuss. Of course, we have seen how science has sometimes
limited itself and avoided areas of discomfort, but the ideal remains.
     In addition to these almost fundamental freedoms inherent in
science, there have been several advancements that have led to extension
of scientific freedom. When Bacon moved his new experimental philosophy
into a completely different compartment of knowledge from religious
thought, he laid the groundwork for the eventual freedom of science from
the religious review that had plagued the likes of Copernicus. And while
science would continue for a long time to nod politely in the direction of
a benevolent creator, it was really in acknowledgement of a supreme and
discoverable order set in motion by nature.
     With these freedoms already in hand, how then can we proceed to
eliminate the rest of the scientific shackles we have examined? As first
noted, the essential unity of science and art as distinct representations
of a common human theme is perhaps where the greatest possibility lies.
Already the fields of psychology and science fiction are striving to fill
in the chasm between humanities and hard sciences, and by moving on their
initiative, we can find areas of interest that link the two. This step is
essential, as the humanities are classically the domain of many of the
freedoms that science has denied itself. Colorful metaphor and
personalized descriptions are everywhere in the arts, and science must
come in contact with these to understand their value. Perhaps as a first
start, a field of science devoted to studying literary symbols and the
responses they evoke from readers. And I dont mean to take away from the
already existing fields of English theory or rhetoric, but simply to let
scientists experience literature on their own terms. By giving the
scientist access to numerical data about symbols, perhaps science can
learn something that the students of humanities had missed. And most
definitely, the scientist would come to appreciate the depth and
complexity of literary devices. It would then perhaps be possible for the
introduction of such devices into the scientific literature itself, not as
the object, but as the substance of discourse. Soon following the more
colorful and substantial scientific texts would come acceptance by the
common culture. By discarding the scientific hubris and embracing, at
least to some extent, the common devices of communication, scientific
thought would be able to reach the common man. In time, it may even be
possible for the society as a whole to once again recognize scientists as
heroes. The problem of sciences dependence on outside resources is more
elusive to a summary correction, but perhaps the wider acceptance science
could gain by the above method would promote public funding of science in
general. Even some of the seemingly pure academic subjects. The public has
been willing to provide for science before, a revitalization of the
relationship between science and the public is all that is really needed.
These are just simple untested solutions, but the fact that even a simple
solution can be imagined is a great encouragement.
     Science has come an enormous distance since the seventeenth
century beginnings of experimental philosophy. Unfortunately, along the
way, science has restricted itself from its true character in artificial
ways. Evident in the modern scientific literature, is a profound void of
personal experience or literary device. Compared to the beginnings of
science, this seems a lamentable loss. Certainly a well constructed
metaphor can provide just as much understanding as a detailed table of
figures. But there is hope, as science is in its very essence capable of
the same creative feats as the arts. Perhaps the hermitic trend of science
can be reversed, and it can once again become immersed in the larger
cultural background.
 
 

                                            Works Consulted

Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Ingram Bywater. New York: The Modern Library.
    1954.
Bacon, Francis. Trans. Peter Urbach, John Gibson. Novum Organum. Chicago:
    Open Court. 1994.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Blazing World and Other Writings. Ed. Kate
    Lilley. New York: Penguin Books. 1992.
Gilbert, Willian. De Magnete. Trans. P. Fleury Mottelay. New York: Dover
    Publications. 1958.
Hooke, Robert. Micrographia, or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute
    Bodies, made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observation and Inquires
    thereupon. London: Martyn and Allestry. 1665.
Johnson, Ben. The Alchemist. Ed. Elizabeth Cook. London: A & C Black Ltd.
    1991.
Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures: A Second Look. Cambridge: Cambridge
    University Press. 1965.
Sprat, Thomas. History of the Royal Society. English Science, Bacon to
    Newton. Ed. Brian Vickers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987.