infocus #24 December 2011 Broad Vision

DOI: 10.22443/rms.inf.1.77

Microscopy and related imaging technologies have a profound effect on our understanding of the world, making visible the invisible and making known the unknown. The technologies themselves do not provide passively the answers; humans are inquisitive animals and it is the questions we choose to seek answers to that spur our progress. We are also tribal animals under social pressures to conform. The higher the level of indoctrination the greater is the risk of falling foul of our peers by asking dumb questions. Some of us are drawn towards the sciences in seeking answers; some of us turn to the arts to make sense of our constantly changing world. Simplistically we could frame this arts-science divide as subjectivity versus objectivity, but the philosophical spectrum is not black and white - art and science do not exist, and never have, in isolation from one another.