COMPASSION AND SUBJECTIVITY
Yariv, Amnon. 1999. Pages 67-75 in Unbroken Poetry: The Work of Enrique Martínez Celaya. Whale & Star, Venice, California.


Enrique Martínez Celaya: What do you think is the role of compassion in science?

Amnon Yariv: Compassion in science? I never thought of it. Give me some clues. Compassion for?

EMC: Wislawa Szymborska has said that in Poland poetry had to be an instrument of compassion because of everything around them after the war. Poetry had to be part of all the destruction, sadness, loss and confusion. This is a big issue for me in the arts and I was wondering if you have encountered it in science?

AY: You know, my answer would be no. I think science regards itself as dispassionate or independent of human conditions. Absolute truth is out there and it is our job to find it. It makes science absolutely objective. There is a great deal of subjectivity in how you attack it-what topics you choose to work on and what kind of methods you bring to bear. But I have never heard the word compassion used in the context of science. Szymborska justified Polish poetry taking the direction it did, because of need, social need. In a way she used poetry as a tool to achieve something. A tool can be bent, because once you have an aim in mind, then if the tool doesn't quite do it, you bend it so it can. But science is to us absolutely objective, as I said. And therefore, it's not a tool for anything. It is an aim by itself. It's truth. Because truth can be bent by morality or people, in science we say that everything eventually has to withstand experimentation. That is what truth is. If you can predict and then do experiments to verify, then you have a theory. So one can, maybe, sneak compassion into it, but it would be hard.

EMC: Do you think that scientists, are more or less likely to be compassionate than the average individual?

AY: I think that people who deal with ideas tend to be more compassionate and in general more socially aware. Maybe the science background enables them to look at the world more objectively and to peel off the lies. It makes them more analytical, more critical. So maybe... is that what you meant? I don't think that science itself is necessarily compassionate but I think many scientists are.

EMC: What is the future of science?

AY: I think the future of science looks good. There will always be science. Its popularity may wax and wane, but I think that from day one people have always been interested in the universe... tried to understand more and more, and that is really the basis for science. Science has acquired a little more power and prestige since the second World War just because of the fact that it helped America win the war... the A-bomb. But even before that and after that, what drives science is curiosity. And curiosity is part of human nature.

EMC: Do you have any particular questions in science that you would like to see answered? Special curiosities? Unfinished business?

AY: I think that the world was created by God to be infinite, and regardless of how much we learn, what we don't know will forever remain infinite. Which means there will be work forever for scientists. And you are not working as a physicist in order to get all the answers, you're working just to increase that which you know. So, yes, I have my agenda of things that I'm interested in, but there isn't something which I feel that I need to finish. If I die tomorrow it is okay. I have done something, taught a few people... good enough.

EMC: Sometimes when people ask me about my science background and its relationship to art, the question of faith and intuition comes up. In your scientific work is there room for faith or intuition?

AY: Most of us that are doing research are at the boundary between the known and unknown. And the boundary is kind of fuzzy. Everything here is known perfectly well, and from here on, not at all. There's that gray area in between. But you are roughly at the boundary. And that's what the search for definition is. And you have to make guesses. And the guesses are intuitive guesses, about what things are going on and what kind of experiments you are going to conduct. I think this boundary, although we keep pushing it, will never get to the end. The barrier between the known and the unknown is infinite. There will never be an end to it.

EMC: I like the mystery in this boundary between the known and the unknown. Despite the vastness of this infinite territory of the unknown one can make incursions or probes with imagination and insight. Intuition is not the only quality that relates science and art. When I talk about science and its relationship to art, questions of language and translation often come up.

AY: Language... you know, mathematics is the language of physics and I really don't think that you can convey it in any fashion short of learning it. That's why I think that laymen don't really understand science. Mathematics is one of the crowning pieces of human achievement and it is the language of physics. This is a difficulty and a disadvantage of science. People can appreciate the beauty in art. People can come to the museum and see your work but I can't describe what I do to my friends. The language, the consistency, the logic, the beauty of the language or experiences are not transferable.

EMC: Well if you think of this description as a translation, art is not so different. Most people do not understand or relate to contemporary art. You can describe what you're doing in physics but you can not actually do the physics at the level of description. You have to ultimately use the language of physics, mathematics and so on. Art is very similar in the sense that you can explain the issues that you understand in the work, you can explain some of your ideas and part of the context in which it is created, but ultimately the meaning is embodied in the way it was made. And if you try to break it down and translate it you end up at the level of description similar to a physicist. You cannot make art at the level of that description. You can not make art by just the combination of interesting ideas that you may mention in a description.

AY: Well, art must be much more subjective. I mean, take physics. Take two professors who will teach, let's say, very advanced general relativity. One in the United States and one in China. They will essentially use the same language and say the same things more or less... convey the same picture. While two artists describing the same piece of art, will probably say very different things. There is a certain elemental objectivity to physics which, I guess, maybe doesn't exist in art, because it is so subjective.

EMC: I do not completely agree. In physics you test your calculation to see if the solution is right. By contrast, many are of the opinion that every position is equally valid in art and that "correctness" is not the issue, that there is no test. While subjectivity is intrinsic to the choices of artists and viewers, it is not the whole picture. You see a tree painted by Mondrian and a tree painted by Leonardo. The embodiment of the idea is very different. Very different trees. But when people describe how these trees evoke feeling and thoughts they will say very similar things. It is true that describing your preference for a visual experience is an aspect of subjectivity. But two well painted trees seem to often speak similarly to their audience despite descriptive differences. Of course, what I am making here is a simple argument for essence. What physicists might describe as the basis of nature. Maybe it is something hard to name without naming those parts that you can see on the outside, but there is something they are all going around. Does that make sense?

AY: It sounds a little strange. Because as a physicist, you talk about this common core, but I really do not know what it is and I am not convinced that it does exist. I know you could not prove it exists, and that is why it is art and not physics. I thought until I spoke to you that art really was much more intuitive and subjective. I think, in my opinion, that trying to find maybe a common utopia, a logical element in art the same way that you do in physics is maybe trying to force an artificial constraint on art. It may not be necessary. I mean you know, probably, that most artists don't ask these questions ever, right? Something is pushing them. They are driven by something which probably they cannot express.

EMC: I do not think that many interesting contemporary artists ignore these questions. I believe in the clarity and power of emotional insight as a component of the work. But I also believe in a certain amount of other factors involved. The landscape of contemporary art has changed significantly and many simply detest the idea of the artist working from inspirational effort devoid of reflective insight. Being conscious of what you're trying to do does not strip away the emotion, validity, or directness of it.

AY: But probably there are many different ways of telling stories which are all equally valid.

EMC: That is the question, whether they are all equally valid. Ultimately what makes an approach valid is whether it leads to a good work.

AY: By moving other people. By making them feel something.

EMC: Right. A painting is its own argument, a defense of its own validity.

AY: Suppose you painted a work about your grandfather, the relationship you had, his love for animals, birds. The audience may just see a picture of an old man feeding a bird and some of them will be moved, but maybe not for the same reasons that moved you to paint it.

EMC: Right. But it is the same as in any other field. You might construct something and the knowledge and information used to construct it does not show. The object can be opaque to information about its motivations. As long as the object works, maybe it does not matter. I need full investment in the elements involved in order to make the works meaningful to me. It helps me get up every day and work. It also helps to strip away the inconsequential issues. It is not uncommon for me to paint a dozen times over a painting.

AY: You go over it and start again?

EMC: Yes. I start again or cover parts. Sometimes a visitor comes to my studio and likes a painting and then two weeks later they call me about it but the painting no longer exist because it didn't survive.

AY: It didn't pass your test of authenticity, of being real. Well maybe what you sense then is its truth. But you could have painted your grandfather on a different day when the sun was not sunny but cloudy and you had just watched an accident in the street, so you would have been in a completely different mood and because of that would have painted different paintingsstill truthful. You would have wound up with a different painting which would have passed your own test possibly.

EMC: Possibly. But most likely those two or three different kinds of paintings, all of which passed the test, share a large number of constants and I think that is the issue for me. I think there are some things that remain constant and you can always recognize them in the work of an artist. Not only because of a certain look, but because of a specific sensibility and the choice of certain parameters. So much of art is also what you leave out and choose not to include, the kind of economy you use.