Art and Intangibles

after Erwin Panofsky-Idea

Detail - Folger Shakespeare Library-photographer-Peter VanderPoel

When Phidias was asked to create a sculpture of Zeus, a quick check of the schedule would have revealed that the God of Olympus was not available for a sitting. In lieu of His

Magnificence, the sculptor had to rely on his imagination.

I have often wondered if the demise of other human species may not have been the result of lack of speed or limited brain capacity, but rather some intangible trait that would have left no trace in the fossil record.

For several years, I taught at a University whose motto (in latin, of course) was Vertitas et Utilitas, “Truth and Utility” or “Truth and Usefulness’.

At the time I taught there, a reorganization of colleges was being considered with the Architecture Department casting about for a new roommate. At the time it was allied with the engineering and computer science departments. The University motto seemed to provide one metric for evaluating affiliations.

In a strict sense, engineering would fall under the rubric, “Veritas”, as the practice was based on scientific research that would result in unassailable  facts regarding the physical world. But I would suggest that its highest calling would bring it more closely to “Utilitas” where these facts would manifest in the physical construction of civilization.

‘Truth’ can mean different things in different settings. In a court of law, ‘truth’ would be an accurate accounting of something that occurred. But, “Truth” can also describe a sense that extends to ‘meaning’ in general, whether or not it is literally ‘true’-just as a novel sometimes better describes the human condition than can a human physiology textbook.

Architecture might, at first blush, be categorized as useful; useful for sheltering humans and their communities. A chapter in Victor Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris” (better known as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) is entitled “Ceci Tuera Cela” or “This will kill that”. In his telling, “This” is the printing press and “That”is architecture. What Hugo described, though, is not that architecture will disappear as a human need, but rather it will be dethroned as preeminent signpost for civilization. Set in the Middle Ages, Hugo predicted the indestructibility of the printed word in its ubiquity, in contrast to a gothic cathedral, which can be effaced.

My father was a minister and, preaching at a time of an increased insistence of biblical literalism, counseled that, whether the story of Adam and Eve is literally true, we cannot know for sure and that certainty would be an article of faith but in a larger sense we may also know it as a personal  experience that has touched every person in the room.

The ability of homosapiens to conceptualize a line that has no thickness, ‘get’ an ironic remark, or perceive an omniscient being that created the universe appears to be a differentiating characteristic between humans and many other of the planet’s creatures.

Brain physiognomy identifies the neo-cortex as a physical component of the human brain that lizards, say, do not have. This additional layer of cells provides us the ability to adapt to situations; to recognize that repetitive behavior may have to be changed. As the obverse to the old saw, “One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” might be the lizard’s undoing - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. If Ammonites are the only thing you’ll eat, expect bad results when they go extinct.

The inflexible, concrete thinking that doomed the dinosaurs has made humans the pre-eminent species on the planet (for better or worse). The modern world is a collection of thoughts and actions about how things could be: at root an abstraction. Crows are able to use sticks to get food but they are nowhere near to being able to land a crow on the moon or harness technology to mass produce chia pets; these spring from the human imagination.

This abiliiy to trade in ideas has also given us art, another facet of ‘truth’ that allows us to communicate with each other and ourselves the things that are important to us, in short: meaning.

The narrow understanding of ‘truth’ as ‘fact’ is a legitimate and useful pursuit, but the insistence that there is no other meaning might undermine more important, unifying intangibles.

Like the proverbial sweater thread, pulling at the loose end may tend to unravel other aspects of the human species that is essential to what makes us human.