W2P1: Correlations between the Arts and Scientific Success

Polymathy- The ability to learn and excel in multiple different fields

Renaissance Man- A person with many talents, or areas of study



Notes from "Arts Foster Scientific Success: Avocations of Nobel, National Academy, Royal Society, and Sigma Xi Members" by Robert Root-Bernstein, PhD
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Arts-Foster-Scientific-Success-OCR.pdf

Being good at one thing increases odds of being good at another, those good in art have a tendency to also be good in science.

White study (1931): “geniuses” have a wider range of avocations carried out more intensively than the average college graduate

Milgram study: having at least one persistent and intellectually stimulating hobby is a better predictor for career success in any discipline than IQ, standardized test scores, or grades.

Bebow study: Precocity in scoring very high on standardized tests such as the SAT also has been shown to be predictive of creativity and career success

Root-Bernstein:

It has been shown that innovative scientists develop “correlative talents” (Root-Bernstein, 1989) that combine their vocations and avocations into what have been variously called “integrated activity sets” (Dewey, 1934) or “networks of enterprise” (Gruber, 1984, 1988). These terms describe the ability of creative scientists to explore a wide range of apparently unrelated activities and to connect the knowledge and skills gained thereby into integrated networks that can be brought, effectively to bear in raising and solving important scientific problems.

Fine arts also develop skills of value to scientists. J. H. van’t Hoff (NP) (1967), Wilhelm Ostwald (NP) (1909), Santiago Ramon y Cajal (NP) (1951), and Max Planck (NP) all argued in Planck’s words that, “The pioneer scientist must have . . . [an] artistically creative imagination” (Planck, 1949, p. 8)

Creative process is a transdisciplinary link between the sciences and arts (cf., Bohm & Peat, 1987).

For C. H. Waddington, understanding how art was made was a way to understand his own field of embryology, because, “An art object is always an instruction, to do or to experience, not a piece of information; and living things are organized instructions, not organized information” (Waddington, 1972, p. 37)

1947 poll by the starred scientists in American Men of Science: while 74% reported little (35% ) or no (39% ) fine arts training, 80% strongly recommended fine arts training as an essential component of scientific education

Both visual arts and science require "unusual degree of curiosity, desire for learning, puzzle solving, and a desire to think carefully about ideas"