While reading Alan Lightman’s essay, my mind subconsciously :recalls a quote from a favorite

movie of mine, that is Dead Poets Society, which goes, ”And medicine, law, business,
engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty,
romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” The reason is that, constantly I think that
although the sciences and the arts are widely accepted to be different and exclusive to one
another, they bore several similarities which makes them both complementary and important.
For example, a line in his essay which goes, “Eventually, I learned to appreciate both
certainty and uncertainty. Both are necessary in the world. Both are part of being human”,
highlights one of the simpler yet defining similarities between the two. Although, we tend to
think of science as a symbol of certainty, everything it entails boils down from a moment of
uncertainty humans have. Every scientific discovery and experiment are a result of the
endless wandering and questioning of an individual about the state of the world he is in. This
continuous human behavior signifies that the sciences focus on turning uncertainties into
certainties. On the other hand, I believe that art does the opposite of this. The arts focus on
conveying the certainty of beauty, values, and principles to create uncertain human emotions
and perspective. Poetry uses defined words and structure to convey a message, music uses
structured tones and rhythm to invoke emotions and paintings utilizes distinct styles and
patterns to project a changing perspective: these are just some examples of how art is used to
mimic certainties in nature and then turn them into uncertainties that we often strive to
achieve. This ideology supports the idea that arts and sciences complement each other
perfectly, not only because one fills where the other lacks, rather one gives way to make the
other blossom.
Additionally, although I explicitly stated that arts and sciences can be considered
opposites of each other, there is a different way to look at them. Art is the science of studying
human behavior to achieve a deeper understanding of the human psyche while Science is the
art of mimicking nature to understand the technicalities of how it works. In a way, we can also
say that both science and art are from the same thread of human experience but with
deviating goals, the former intends to unravel the enigma of the natural world, while the latter
wants to immortalize the value of humanity by keeping it shrouded in its mystery.