The Place of the Sciences and of the Fine Arts in the Intellectual Scheme of Things

Abstract

The small number of papers Joseph Agassi has published on the philosophical problems raised by the fine arts deal with matters on which it is not well-known that he has views.¹ This is a pity, for it sets him apart in an interesting way from many of his colleagues who treat the arts as a purely private concern. Partly as a result, philosophers of science, most of whom are cultivated people, regularly avoid the problem created by the fact that claims to knowledge are made outside of science as well as within it, and quite frequently by and on behalf of the arts. Some indication of how these claims stand in relation to scientific knowledge would seem essential to complete the epistemological scheme of any philosophy of science. At least Agassi has recognised and addressed this problem, congruent with the fact that he too takes an intense private interest in the arts. Throughout the years of our acquaintance, the arts and their cognitive standing have been a shared interest of Agassi and myself. Our discussions go back to the London School of Economics in the late nineteen-fifties and the great excitement created by the extension of Popper’s philosophy to art as pioneered by E.H. Gombrich and brought to spectacular fruition in his Art and Illusion of 1960. Agassi’s private interests in the arts centre on music, with which he likes to surround himself, on literature, in the English (and world) classics of which he is very well read, and on the movies. Since I am something of a specialist in the latter, and have idiosyncratic tastes in the other arts, we have also had, as can be imagined, many lively exchanges. This being a field of endeavour where we do not see entirely eye to eye, I relish the present opportunity to give robust expression to some long-standing and unresolved disagreements.