PERFORMATIVE SCIENCE

Art as Science or Science as Art or both at the same time, i.e. Art=Science: These are only different ways of confusing the proper with the improper. Contrary to the rules, it was Goethe who obviously managed to harmonize art and science in his work. The last line of his famous poem "Ginkgo Biloba" reads: "Do my songs not make you feel - That I am both one and twain?" The historian of science Walter Saltzer writes in his essay [1] on Goethe after quoting the poem "Ginkgo Biloba" out of the West-Eastern Divan, i.e., Goethe's book of the reconciliation of cultures:

"The divided, but symmetrically unified Ginkgo leaf - a splendid symbol for the artist and scientist Goethe. Art and science in one! Does that go together, after all? Or perhaps it doesn't in the end? Should the last line, therefore, not better read, 'that I am divided and only half'."( Translation by HHD)

And with reference to the historical precedence Lucretius, he further writes:

"The ideal of the [Freudian] theory would then be the suicide due to inner conflict, demonstrated through the pretended vita of the nature-inspired poet and passionate advocate of the atomic world view at the same time, Titus Lucretius Carus. Of course, Lucretius' suicide is a trendy invention only, and even the most intimate expert does not know anything about a suicidal end of Goethe." (Translation by HHD)

Does there exist a bridge between art and science? Not so taking the ontological stance. Heidegger says, "... there exists no bridge, only the jump." Performative science, therefore, is the name for bearing up against the inner conflict. Not a bridge. But perhaps a ferry. A ferry, which has been drifted a bit from its path after each return from the other side.

[1] Walter Saltzer: Goethe - Naturwissenschaft, Kunst und Welterleben komplementär. In: Alfred Schmidt und Klaus J Grün (Hrsg.): Durchgeistete Natur: Ihre Präsenz in Goethes Dichtung, Wissenschaft und Philosophie. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt 1999.