CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Phillips, Addison Emery |
|---|---|
| Title | Art, Science, and the Meaning of Life: an Inquiry into Art in a Scientistic Culture |
| Summary | In this thesis I argue that the dominance of scientific understanding in Western culture or “scientism” is problematic for both epistemic and existential reasons and that other forms of understanding must therefore be regarded with equal legitimacy. I argue both that there are phenomena in human life that the methods of science preclude the possibility of coming to a scientific understanding of and that scientific understanding has the negative feature of reductively explaining phenomena in a way which strips them of their meaning for human life. Further, I make the case that some art is able to convey understanding about the world and that artistic understanding remedies both of the problems which arise when the world is understood strictly scientifically or “scienti stically.ȁ d; I stand in opposition to most of the history of philosophy with my perspective on art. However, I offer no new theory of art but contend that art does a variety of things and serves a variety of functions – one among them being the conveying of understanding – and that the search for a simple theory of art is therefore counter-productive. |
| Supervisor | Weberman, David |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/phillips_addison.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University