Science or art? Which is most important?

My photo: Cows. Why? Because the General Theory of Relativity came to Einstein in the form of a dream about cows being electrocuted. Of course.

We tend to categorise people's predispositions as either leaning towards science and maths or arts and culture, but the greatest intellects do not recognise a hard separation between the two. Both science and art are attempting to understand the workings of the universe around us. 

Everything you see around you that we humans have discovered or manifested into this world started out as a single thought. Many of our noted scientists were also artists or musicians and appreciated great beauty - Leonardo, Einstein, Newton - universal wonder and curiosity inspiring them first to imagine and then to validate.

​This quote from a contemporary quantum physicist sums it up neatly:

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"And the beauty of the scientific enterprise is that we are in touch with the unknown, what we don’t know, and we try to make steps into it. So, that’s a strength of science, that it works out of beauty, out of intuition, out of imagination, but it has a very solid way, then, ofchecking." Carlo Rovelli ​

So we should encourage both aspects of this dual nature of our mind in our children, for in fact they are both totally necessary for the future of mankind. If you can dream it, you can do it.

​But first you must dream it.