A REPRISE of the essential disciplinary structure of A&O–our scaffold:  In our pursuit of the connectedness of phenomena to each other and to our selves, DESCRIPTION  is a first strategy–and the deployment of our capacities for description is a crucial first step in ART and in DEEP ethology.   

Our respect for the power of the existential phenomenological perspective means that a description of our FEELINGS are just as important  as a PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

[sensations, perceptions, and feelings, co-constitute experience: what we share is how these are represented in our minds.  In our pursuit of confidence in the validity of our experience—its correspondence and coherence—we represent it to the world as best we can.  We tell the best story we can with the best evidence we have.]

We can ask how our phenomenon of interest has been represented in the words or work of other people–ARTISTS in particular have the disposition and skills to represent their perceptions to the rest of us, but all of us are to some degree artists and we possess the advantage of first-person experience.   

DEEP ethologists, then systematically assess the correlated phenomena–especially apparent causes and consequences–that  can be described with precision in terms that can be shared and mutually corroborated or validated:

development, ecology, evolution, and physiology. 

HOW DEEP can we go?

ONCE DESCRIBED we can entertain the power of communication to help understanding: Thoreau WROTE, “It takes two to speak the truth– one to speak, and another to hear.” (1849, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” “Wednesday”) . . .  but like all communications—it may also be an important bridge between different parts of the painter’s mind, evoking experience formerly veiled in unconsciousness.

“It is said that Verdi sat with a pounding heart and on occasion wept while composing the music for his operas. More than a century later, some listeners show the identical reactions. Thus, like written text in literature, a musical score is the medium through which creative artists communicate with their audience.”[i]

IN OUR DESCRIPTIONS, ART and SCIENCE collaborate—are inextricably intertwined—and thus co-constitute the experience we wish to understand.  Their distinctive constellations of cognitive functions map roughly on to sentience and sapience—feeling and thinking.

From the perspectives of ART we can ask about its EXPRESSIVE and RECEPTIVE qualities, as well as the MEDIUM—the mode of transmission.

From the perspective of SCIENCE we seek a physical description of whatever traits we perceive. And we emphasize ethology—the integrative biology of behavior—and its four main perspectives: Development, Ecology, Evolution, and Physiology.

BUT HOW DO SCIENCE and (e.g.) POETRY INFORM EACH OTHER? A book by physicist Kip Thorne and artist Lia Halloran explores the mysteries of space through poetry and paintings.  Journalist Ron Cowen’s  BOOK REVIEW  explores the idea by interviewing the authors. (LINK)  

FREE ASSOCIATIONS   (any mind-map I’d make would have these links)

• DESCRIPTIONS are necessarily objective but when agreed upon provide a shared belief, shared foundation for further exploration.
• IMMERSION in your topic can foster love (look at LOVE – its biological and psychological background) 
• (sensu “propinquity” (?))
  • associate with Goethe ^[i]  (“A man doesn’t learn to understand anything unless he loves it” (Man lernt nichts kennen als was man Liebt))
    • [Connects also to Marcel Proust’s “We love only what we do not wholly possess.” (On n’aime que ce qu’on ne possède pas tout entier.”]
  • may induce sensory adaptation which may be connected to figure-ground transitions: foreground sensations and perceptions receding into background & thereby revealing new elements.  (Like staring at optical illusions … in fact, anything, including yourself in the mirror). 
  • Is it a coincidence that the eye-lock—mutual staring—of  potential friends gets a less obstructed view through the “window of the soul”?—insight into the implicit, possibly ineffable, feelings and intentions of the other person) 
• “Listen to be Influenced” (a favorite phrase of Kathy Greenberg)
  • [= “look to see” affected by context (museum) and attention; appreciation of art outside deliberate display can be overcome in part by looking for “found art.”]
    • [connected to: “But in the mud and scum of things / There alway, alway something sings.” — Emerson’s “Fragments of Nature and Life”] This emphasizes the role of the observer in finding additional or deeper meaning in experience.  

• The unexpected power of describing.   WHEN you are stymied in thinking about the how’s and why’s of a phenomenon, “DESCRIBE THE HELL OUT OF it !!”   for example, 
  • DRAWING:   Learning to draw … learning to look … learning to describe
    • Read : “Take this Fish…” and then  and   How Drawing Helps Us Observe, Discover, and Invent
  • Looking beneath the surface → more connections, deeper levels of meaning … a kind of love? obsession? 

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[i]. Excerpt from  Josef P. Rauschecker (2002) “Where Science Meets the Arts,” A review of Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture by William Benzon (Basic Books (HarperCollins), New York, 2001. in Science 296:1032.

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