The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
April 2004
Thomas Munro
Knowledge and Control in the Field of Aesthetics
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1941, 1-12.
IN times of war and economic distress, anyone who writes,
reads, or teaches aesthetics is likely to feel an obligation to defend such an
outlay of time and energy. Assuming that
those who make this outlay are not called upon at present for more immediately
practical service in support of civilized institutions, what apologia for
aesthetics is possible?
One defense is to admit
that aesthetics is a useless subject - perhaps the most completely so of all
subjects - and then to urge the value of keeping alive some spark of interest
in pure theory for its own sake; some example of the uncorrupted love of truth
and beauty to which humanity may return when the storm is over.
Inspiring as this ideal may
be, it goes unnecessarily far in admitting the complete impracticality of
aesthetics. To be sure, no one can claim
for aesthetics important immediate results in action, comparable to those of
military strategy, chemistry or statecraft. Nor can one easily prove that aesthetic theory
has had much effect on action, even in the field of art. For trends in aesthetic theory have on the
whole followed, not preceded, major trends in art; justifying or condemning the
latter after the fact, and largely ignored by later artists. But this inefficacy is not necessarily
permanent, and may perhaps be corrected by a different approach to aesthetics
itself.
1
Obviously, we have not yet
achieved scientific understanding and control of art,
or of human nature by the means of art, in any degree approaching that to which
we have achieved these ends in other fields of phenomena. Through chemistry and physics we do, in
substantial degree, control the physical world, for good and for ill; through
medicine, hygiene, animal husbandry and horticulture we control, to a less
extent, the world of plant and animal life. Through the social sciences we have achieved
some understanding of human institutions and group behavior, but considerably
less control. Through psychology and its
educational and therapeutic applications, we are beginning the scientific
conquest of mental phenomena.
The relations of art and of
aesthetics to these other fields are manifold. A work of art is in some respects a physical
and chemical phenomenon; in some respects a social and economic one; in some
respects, psychological. Knowledge about
its nature, origins and functioning can be derived through the methods and
viewpoints of all these sciences, and all can show us how to use and control it
in certain ways. But none is especially
interested in works of art as such, or devotes a major part of its effort to
describing and experimenting with them. They
enter the social and psychological sciences as one among many types of
phenomena, and are studied there in rather limited, specialized ways. Aesthetics is traditionally the subject which
concerns itself with works of art and their attributes, directly and
explicitly. But so far, it has failed
not only to achieve scientific understanding and control in the realm of art,
but even to accept that aim as one to be consciously and systematically worked
for. Even the words “control of art,” or
“control by means of art,” have a strange, fantastic
sound, as if one were proposing something impossible, and perhaps undesirable.
Yet such control is, to
some extent, being actively practiced today, and has been practiced for several
millennia. As all students of history
know, art has been one of the most powerful instruments of control by organized
religion, by governments and dominant social groups. As a means of propaganda, it is a potent
weapon of totali-
2
tarian states today, in such forms as oratory, pageantry,
music, idealized portraits and repulsive caricatures. In the service of modern capitalism, it has
achieved complex and costly developments in the form of advertising and other
commercial arts. Educators make
increasing use of art, such as textbook illustrations, models, motion pictures,
and theater projects, as means of directing the mental development of students.
Doctors use art to correct mental maladjustments
and relieve nervous distress. To some
extent, nearly everyone uses art and thus achieves some sort of control with
it; not necessarily for any ulterior end, but perhaps for the immediate enjoyment,
escape, or enriched experience it can bring. That is, he uses it to control his own
immediate moods and trains of thought.
In the hands of clever
manipulators, such as are found among advertising and propaganda agencies,
radio, book, and cinema producers, the control of art reaches high levels of
efficiency, though usually along restricted lines. These persons can often predict with fair
statistical success what effects a certain type of art will have on masses of
people, as manifested in their willingness to buy, listen, vote, obey, or
fight. But such control is not only
selfish and antisocial in many cases; it is also, on the whole, unscientific,
empirical, rule-of-thumb. It often fails
for no apparent reason, and contains a large element of guesswork. People can
use art and achieve some control by it, as they used heat to cook and
fermentation to make wine, long before scientific physics and biochemistry
understood the basic principles requisite for their accurate, extensive
control.
In every realm of
phenomena, human thought passes gradually from folklore to science; from
guesswork, wishful thinking, dogmatism and vague speculation to verified
knowledge; and as a result, to more effective control, including collective use
and management for the common welfare. In several realms (the older, more exact
sciences) it has achieved the passage to a comparatively high degree, although
by no means completely. In aesthetics
and ethics, it has scarcely begun, but is in a state of slow transition, as new
scientific resources become available for approaching ancient problems - or,
3
rather, for approaching afresh the phenomena of art and
human conduct. (In the process, the
ancient problems sometimes turn out to have been based on misconceptions and
false assumptions, and to require a thorough restatement.)
Modern science had gone a
considerable way before Francis Bacon gave conscious, explicit utterance to
certain of its aims and methods. As more
clear-sighted progress in the older sciences followed Bacon’s heralding, so now
it might occur in the study of art if Bacon’s own approach were consistently
applied there. The understanding and
control of art are advancing apace without waiting for aesthetic theorists to
give the word. They are advancing, not
only through scattered scientific researches and experiments, but through
extremely practical and sometimes mercenary - even deceptive and destructive -
uses, as in the management of advertising, propaganda, and other arts for
popular consumption. Applied aesthetics
does not wait for pure aesthetics to solve its abstract problems, but proceeds
to experiment with rule-of-thumb hypotheses derived from practical experience,
and usually not regarded as pertaining to aesthetic theory. Pure aesthetics, on the other hand, might
learn much by observing the results of such practical experience in the control
of art.
This cannot come while
aestheticians are still so largely preoccupied with the traditional problems
handed down to them from past philosophies. Notice how aesthetics is defined in
Webster’s New International Dictionary (2nd ed.): “The branch of
philosophy dealing with beauty or the beautiful, esp. in the fine arts; a
theory or the theories of beauty, its essential character, the tests by which
it may be recognized or judged, and its characteristic relation to or effect
upon the human mind…” Thus the
aesthetician’s quest is directed from the start, not toward a set of actual
phenomena to be understood and if possible controlled, but toward a conceptual
will-o’-the-wisp, an abstraction whose meaning is endlessly debatable and
ambiguous, so that he never can be sure that he has found his quarry or is
looking at it. Hence he may spend his
days as many writers
4
have, and cover countless pages, with fruitless debate
over the proper definition of beauty.
The outlook is scarcely
clearer if he is told, as in Webster’s following
definition, that aesthetics is “the scientific study of taste (sense 7).” For taste, in its turn, is said to mean “the
power of discerning and appreciating fitness, beauty, order, congruity,
proportion, symmetry, or whatever constitutes excellence, esp. in the fine arts
and belles-lettres.” Again, “taste” in
this sense is not an objective term for a set of phenomena which can be sought
out and studied by anyone. Whether any particular case is or is not an example of it is
debatable from the start.
To be sure, the word “beauty”
and the word “taste,” like “ugly,” “sublime,” “romantic” and other names for
the traditional aesthetic categories, are phenomena of human thought and
behavior, and can be objectively studied as to their origins, meanings and
uses. But the scope of aesthetics can
hardly be limited to mere semantic study of its own terminology. In modern times, it refuses to confine itself
to the study of a few abstract categories, attributes, and alleged standards of
value. Its discussions usually deal with
works of art, and these are commonly recognized as its primary field of
phenomena. If “art” itself is not
defined in a confusingly eulogistic sense as restricted to very skillful, good
or beautiful products; if it is conceived objectively, so as to include any picture,
any statue, any poem or piece of music, and works in other mediums as well,
whether good or bad, it denotes a readily accessible field of phenomena.
German writers have made
more use than we of the concept “general science of art” (alligemeine Kunstwissenschaft). Some writers understand it in a sense
different from “aesthetics,” the latter being taken in the more traditional,
philosophical sense. The principal
German periodical in the field has been called “Journal of Aesthetics and General
Science of Art.” Others identify the
two, and conceive of aesthetics itself as the general science of art. The term “science of art” is still avoided by
writers in English; partly because they are impressed by the degree to which
present studies
5
of art still fall short of scientific status. The term “science of art” stands for a future
goal, not a present achievement; but there is some advantage in keeping the
goal explicitly before our minds. In so
far as aesthetics itself becomes regarded as the science (or would-be science)
of art, there is of course no need for the distinction.
To describe aesthetics as a
future science tends to suggest at once the approach of Fechner
and his followers up to the present day; a disappointing approach so far, which
has undeservedly monopolized the term “experimental aesthetics.” For it has implied, not the broadly
experimental attitude of all intelligent thinking, but an over-reliance on
attempts at exact quantitative measurement and the laboratory type of
psychological procedure. The progress of
aesthetics to scientific status can not be hastened beyond certain limits, and
is even retarded by a misguided, premature devotion to extreme behaviorism and
statistical measurement, with consequent ignoring of less exact, less
rigorously objective methods. Most
attempts at exact measurement in aesthetics so far have turned out to be either
dubious or trivial, avoiding central problems or advancing specious claims to
have solved them. In the thirty-three
substantial volumes of the Zeitschrift für Aesthetik, there has been
comparatively little of such deceptive arithmetic, and the goal of a science of
art has been approached on the whole in a more tentative and flexible way.
In all countries, most of
the recent books, articles and courses produced under the name “aesthetics”
have extended to a much wider scope than debate over the abstract meaning and
supposed laws of beauty. Even the more
distinctly philosophical tend to make increasing reference to particular works
of art, as well as to specific types and styles of art. Although one hears of the “aesthetics of
music,” the “aesthetics of sculpture,” etc., most aesthetic discussions emphasize
comparisons between the arts, and factors common to them. Recent aesthetics has become, on the whole, a
rather highly generalized kind of art criticism, reporting current issues in
the interpretation and evaluation of old and modern art, with some attempt at
clarification by the author, and defense of one or another view. Its methods
6
have been literary, along lines of informal exposition and
argument, rather than attempts at quantitative or even strictly logical demonstration.
It has remained fairly distinct from art
history and cultural history, in spite of some overlapping, largely through
avoiding chronological or genetic organization. Instead, it has sought to explain the basic
nature and principal varieties of structure in art, the elements in form and
how they are organized.
It deals with questions of
value, sometimes to analyze the philosophical or psychological nature of
aesthetic value; sometimes to discuss alleged “art principles” or laws and
standards of value in art. Here it has
been, on the whole, increasingly timid about affirming definite standards, and
increasingly relativistic in conceding that many different kinds of art may be
good under different conditions and for different purposes. This has come about, not so much through the
arguments of philosophic relativists, as through the wider acquaintance of
modern aestheticians with the tremendous variety of art forms, past and present,
each of which has fulfilled some function in its own cultural setting.
Another main element in
recent aesthetics has been the psychology of creation and appreciation; of the
artist’s processes and of aesthetic experience. Most systematic texts on aesthetics include
chapters on these subjects, under one name or another. In other words, aesthetics is not only the
science of art itself, of works of art, but also the study of those types of
human activity and experience most closely related to art. It is the study of art as an activity, and
also of the contemplation, use and enjoyment of works of art. Say Webster, in an additional definition,
aesthetics is “the psychology of the sensations and emotions that have the fine
arts for their stimulus.” But one can
hardly limit the study to sensation and emotion, for reasoning, imagining, and
other functions also have important roles in the process. Since there is still much obscurity
surrounding the nature of those complex, variable processes we vaguely call “creation”
and “appreciation,” and since they are hard or impossible to observe in a behavioristic way, current accounts of them in aesthetic
theory are
7
likely to be a compound of speculation, introspection, and
scraps of laboratory research.
Limited as our knowledge
and control of them are at present, they provide another field of phenomena for
aesthetics to examine. From a
psychological point of view, even “taste” can be objectively considered, if we
give that word a different meaning from the one quoted above. Taste, that is, need not be defined as “good
taste;” as ability to discern and appreciate value in art; but in a more
factual sense, as a tendency to like certain things and dislike others; as a
set of actual habits and standards of preference, whether right or wrong. In that sense, everyone has taste, and the
problem of its genesis, varieties and modes of operation becomes an objective
psychological problem. In aesthetics or
aesthetic psychology, we study it with special reference to works of art and
certain closely related types of object, such as scenes in nature.
But “taste” in any sense is
not the whole problem of aesthetic psychology, and has long been
overemphasized, in general theory and in experimental research. When paramount stress is laid on the question
of what people like or should like in art, what they consider beautiful or
ugly, and for what reasons, the whole subject is likely to appear rather
trivial to the outside world. Such an
emphasis often springs from a narrowly individualistic hedonism in regard to
art in general, and a consequent ignoring of the many important functions -
intellectual, moral, practical, and other - which art exerts in society, in
addition to pleasing the senses and emotions of the individual.
Again, the task of control
in this field is one that society has to undertake with or without the aid of
aesthetics. It does so, for example, in
art education; in training the prospective artist, in teaching “art
appreciation,” or in teaching simple artistic techniques as a part of general
education. It undertakes, by implication
at least, to develop the abilities of the student in dealing with works of art:
his powers of creation, of appreciation, or both. Yet what are these powers, and how do they
function in the actual processes of creation
8
and appreciation? How
do individuals differ, and how does a given individual develop from childhood
to maturity as an artist or a connoisseur? To what extent can powers of imagination, perception,
or original conception and expression be taught, and what are the best ways of
doing so? To what extent is technical
discipline in traditional forms, or free expression, the more effective means
to these ends? Teachers of the arts must
assume some hypothetical answers to such questions and act upon them, either
blindly or with full recognition of the underlying problems. But as yet, aesthetic psychology gives them
little scientific help in devising effective means to ends. Hence our educational control of art abilities
is still extremely slight and uncertain. We do not even know how much effect any system
of formal education can have, in interaction with the potent forces of
heredity, home environment, and enveloping socio-economic trends.
Discussion under the name of
aesthetics has been steadily branching out away from its traditional preoccupation
with abstract categories, to take in a wider and wider subject-matter. The old problems are not lost permanently from
view, for we keep returning to them with a clearer understanding of their
cultural genesis, and of their specific implications when applied to concrete
data. For example, the concept of “unity
in variety, order in multiplicity” appears in ever-new and changing lights as
we discover how many different ways, unsuspected by classical philosophers,
artists of primitive, exotic, and contemporary cultures have found for
organizing their diverse materials. Aesthetics
does not need to stop being philosophical, merely because it carries on more
detailed, empirical research than in the past. There is always need - in fact, greater need
as the scope of investigation extends - for the philosophical work of
coordination and generalization. The
old, speculative aesthetics “from above” will not be wholly replaced by the
opposite, Fechnerian kind, “from below.” As in all other sciences, there will be
constant oscillation between empirical data and theoretical hypotheses, both
narrow and broad in scope.
9
As aesthetic discussion
keeps taking in more data and theory from cultural history, anthropology,
sociology, psychology, and other sources, traditionalists occasionally ask,
“But is all this really the proper field of aesthetics?” Is it not the task of psychology to study the
processes of creative and aesthetic experience? Is it not for the social sciences to study the
social origins and functions of art? Is
it not for art history and criticism to analyze in detail the countless
different types of form in art? These
questions reveal a misconception of the nature of science, as if its “fields”
were like the sharply bounded plots of land claimed by private owners under
capitalism, and by sovereign states under nationalism. On the contrary, the fields of all sciences
overlap indistinguishably. No science
owns any one to the exclusion of other workers who may wish to deal with it. The various sciences are merely somewhat
different points of view, or phases in a vast, cooperative endeavor. The boundaries between their fields of
phenomena are flexible and arbitrary, based on temporary expediency rather than
on deep-lying divisions in the universe itself. The more significant question to ask in regard
to any particular phenomenon or problem is not “to whom does it rightfully
belong?” but “in what various ways can it be effectively studied, with a view
to social understanding and control ?“
Certainly, all the data and
problems of aesthetics are studied by other sciences, from other points of view
and in other contexts. Psychology might
consistently take them all in as incidental parts of its general description of
human nature; but as a matter of fact psychologists rarely consider works of
art in any great detail. Sociology might
also take them in as social phenomena; but in most books on sociology they are
overwhelmed and reduced to cursory treatment by a mass of other material. Art history and cultural history are usually
so preoccupied with chronological trends and influences that they pass rapidly
over questions of general type and principle.
These and many other subjects yield occasional revealing commentaries on
the arts; but all have other major interests.
10
Because of the admitted
importance of the subject-matter, there is need for some science, some fairly
distinct group of workers, to concentrate upon the theoretical study of the
arts and related types of experience. Whether it be called “aesthetics” or not is
immaterial; but that traditional name is already in use. It needs no radical redefinition, but only a
general acceptance of the extended meaning which actual trends in discussion
have already given it. It should draw
upon all other sciences, all other sources of information and facilities of
research and experiment, for aid in its inquiries.
There is much to be done
along this line, in bridging the gulfs which various groups of scholars and
scientists have dug between each other, in the form of university departments,
specialized professional schools and associations, and specialized periodicals.
It is to be hoped that this new Journal
will help secure genuine cooperation between the many workers in fields now
artificially separated, who are interested in various approaches to aesthetics.
World conditions could
hardly be more unfavorable to new ventures in a subject of remote and debatable
practicality. But conditions in the
world of science and scholarship are in some ways highly favorable to the rapid
progress of aesthetics toward scientific status. As Comte pointed out a century ago, the
possibility of scientific advance in any field depends to a large extent on
whether the necessary prerequisites are available. For aesthetics, they were not present in
sufficient amount in Fechner’s day. But the past three generations have accumulated
enormous resources, along two main lines. One is the understanding of art forms, their
variety, cultural development, and relation to other factors in social history
such as the economic, political, religious and technological. (It is necessary to glance at a
mid-nineteenth-century book on art history to realize how vastly our horizon
has since expanded, as a result of archaeological and ethnological research,
exploration, translation, musical recordings, museum collections, and
reproductions of unfamiliar types of art.) The other is a greater understanding of human
nature through the many branches of scientific psychology and psycho-
11
analysis. This provides
a general framework of knowledge and theory, within which the student of
aesthetic psychology can endeavor to fill out some of the remaining large gaps
in our understanding of how people think, perceive, feel and imagine, learn,
and develop in the complex situations of art.
Modern aesthetics can
undertake not only a synthesis and reinterpretation of these recent discoveries,
but also a systematic sponsorship of new inquiries based upon them. As a result, we may look forward to an
increase in the extent and reliability of generalizations and predictions
concerning (a) the psychological and cultural configurations, individual and
social, which tend to produce various types of art; and (b) the tendency of
certain types of art to produce certain effects upon certain types of person
under certain conditions, both in direct experience of the type usually termed
“aesthetic,” and also in other types of experience and behavior. Such generalizations are a prerequisite for
scientific control in the field of aesthetics.
Curator of
Education
The Cleveland Museum of Art.
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The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
April 2004