NATURAL SCIENCE AND THE FINE ARTS*

Abstract

I PROPOSE to consider here the relations which we may expect to find existing between these two great examples of human endeavour. In so doing it will be seen that the man of science, using that term in the broad sense, has been instrumental both in the fashioning of objects of art and in caring for them afterwards. It appears likely that many of the great masters of classical art were somewhat casual in their concern, as judged by our standards, for the beautiful things which they made ; nowadays conservation has become an art in itself, and the philosophers are not slow in pointing out that our preoccupation with the treasures of the past may be bound up with a certain lack of confidence in ourselves to generate loveliness in our own time. However that may be, there is much to be said for a close study of the techniques of the great masters, and such a discipline does, in fact, help us to devise ways and means of looking after our heritage more adequately.