The more the merrier in quest for natural knowledge

Martin Kemp's book is a welcome addition to the growing study of the interconnections between the inner "imaginative worlds", cultures, and practices of art and science. Kemp has produced this copiously illustrated work from short articles that first appeared in Nature with the aim of serving a broad constituency. Most important, this includes the general reader who might have some knowledge of both disciplines and is curious about their relationship. Such readers are led in a lively and entertaining way towards an introductory appreciation of science's role in a procession of artworks from the Renaissance to the contemporary.

Within the realm of the sciences, there are stimulating pieces on the "art" intrinsic, either by accident or design, in the content and presentation of much classic and modern science. In doing this, Kemp's discussion ranges from Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer to the more modern age of Turner and Duchamp and to contemporary artists such as Cornelia Parker and Andy Goldsworthy. In the semi-chronological narrative that frames his book, Kemp details a movement from an Enlightenment view of nature as product (for example, the studies of Audubon and Stubbs, in which both the object and the painting are presented as stable, whole and knowable) to the modern view of nature as process, evidenced by the more open-ended concerns of contemporary art and science.

Particularly enjoyable are the pieces concerned with the artistic side of science, such as "Hooke's housefly" about Robert Hooke's great work, Micrographia , or Descartes and his Celestial Vortices . Such is the extent of these discussions that "Science and Art" might have been a more accurate title, and, like Kemp, I feel this area richly rewards exploration. In the course of the book, Kemp makes clear that the recent view of the fields of science and art as sharply distinct, and possibly even intrinsically hostile domains of human endeavour, is an aberration.

Kemp should be applauded for reaching out to a broad readership. Unfortunately, my acclaim is tempered somewhat by a sense of a greater goal not achieved. This involves the book's second audience: the more demanding reader. In the introduction, Kemp comments on the "surface level" at which "art-science initiatives" have performed and on his aim to offer something more while still appealing to a broad readership. This is something he elucidates as "structural intuitions". If I understand this concept correctly, then it refers in part to a common human propensity to interpret and describe the world with certain pre-determined visual structures whether in the arts or the sciences.

Fundamentally, I am quite sympathetic to this view. However, from my own experience as a theoretical particle physicist (and recently an interloper in the contemporary art world), there is another related issue - that of the importance and usefulness of many different representations of the same object, theory or artistic idea. I have very rarely, if ever, encountered a single representation (even abstract mathematics) that is adequate to the task of describing our experience of nature, even within a tightly confined domain. Thus varied representations (including almost dominantly visual representations) that successfully encompass some aspect of the phenomenon, but distort or ignore others, are vital in the creation of new ideas.

Similarly, the artists I know seem consciously to seek out many such "distorting" representations as a way to communicate a greater whole. I believe a careful and thoughtful analysis of this issue would be well repaid.

But, alas, Kemp stays within the 500-600 word limit of his original articles, and that is simply too short for the task of arguing his greater case. There is nothing wrong with the epigrammatical style he adopts - it worked for Adorno, for example - but here, the epigrams remain tasty morsels, sometimes quite succulent, but never really yielding the full banquet.

As a work to whet the appetite, perhaps Kemp could have used David Lodge's The Art of Fiction as a guide, another book based on short popular articles, but more modest in ambition.

Thus this admirable effort falls, I fear, partially into the trap of being neither one thing nor another. It suffers from the "two cultures" - not of art versus science, but of academia versus journalism. "Structural intuitions", Kemp's main concession to academic discourse, often feel like a theoretical framework designed post facto to group together a series of short pieces. Perhaps this present work is a staging post along the way to a more detailed (if inevitably more exclusive) analysis of the same relationship. I hope so; I would be most interested to read what Kemp has to say in a less restricted form.

John March-Russell is a theoretical physicist, TH-Division, Cern, Geneva.