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Science and the...

The best scientific research is creative and requires imagination.

It's accepted that exposing creative scientists of one discipline to scientists of another has an energizing effect.  Think of the influx of physicists to biology and genetics that resulted in the insights of DNA and molecular biology.

We see a similar thing happening now with the rise of Systems Biology, mixing mathematicians, engineers, biologists and computer scientists to develop concepts that will lead to virtual cells and organisms.

Any receptive scientist should welcome the opportunity to create and explore in the company of imaginative artists.  The cultural divide between arts and sciences is no more or less insurmountable than that between, say, genetics and quantum physics, and with the right attitudes is likely to lead to synergies and new insights on both sides.

Everyone pays lip-service to the potential of interdisciplinary research, but it is a potential that can only be realised if all participants believe in the common cause.

There are seriously heavyweight scientists who dismiss the possibility that there's anything at all for Science in the Arts connection.  (In some cases this has not inhibited the individual in question from pitching for science-arts funding, which is a symptom of the cynicism with which the pursuit of research grants is conducted in some quarters).

It's essential that there is respect for disciplines other than one's own, and for the expertise and intellectual worth of the practitioners thereof.  Across the sciences, and even within particular branches of science, such respect is by no means uniformly held, and this attitude is even more prevalent when it comes to relations across the arts-science boundary.

We've never had any difficulty as scientists in holding our colleagues from over the cultural water in the highest regard as distinguished achievers in their own fields, and as people from whom we could learn by keeping an open mind and a genuine curiosity about what they aim for and how they go about achieving their goals.  We hope, and believe, these attitudes are reciprocated.

Even if one takes the most crassly utilitarian and pecuniary attitude to the function of scientific research, it is a fact of political life that, in the UK at least, the so-called creative industries are economically as important as the technology and environmental sectors that R&D traditionally serves; so I argue that undertaking joint ventures with "creatives" is no less than a patriotic duty!

As well as having a dynamic influence on research and creativity, the science-art connection is one of the most rewarding means of communicating with a generally science-averse public.

It has enabled us to take our science to places and people who would not otherwise encounter it.

This not only includes venues and audiences normally focused on the arts, but also the temples of biomedical science, where ignorance of (and hostility to) the environmental and agricultural science disciplines is frighteningly widespread.