Science and Arts

Overheard a dinner conversation between father and son.
The young teen was about to make the choice of his life. Whether to be in the science field or the arts field.

Son: What is the difference between science subjects and arts subjects?
Father: If you want to be a professional, you do science. For example, engineers, architects, doctors... (Father hesitates...) if you want to do arts, it is also good. Arts is about managing people. So if you want to be in the management business, you do arts... (Father rethinks his logic for a while) Accounting is a different category altogether.

Besides sharing the funny anecdote with my parents, the episode made me think about the distinction between science and arts. What is its essential quality and why the division in a world which places emphasis on being an all rounded human being?

Einstein again shed some light on the issue. To begin with, it was not division, but its commonality that he was concerned with on the issues of Science and Arts.

What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common

Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition.