Humanity is a species of order, or at least that is what we strive to become. Government, family organisation, employment, everything we experience in our life, that is created by humans, looks to be a standardised system. 

Having systems and algorithms is what permits us to get the ropes of concepts to later be innovative, it allows justice to prosper as, theoretically, all are treated equally. Systems make us feel safe because whether we like it or not, that is what we are programmed to achieve.

 

      Now, the conflict lies in nature not aligning itself to humanity’s internal mission, and instead being almost purely chaotic. Is it not? Well, a mathematician might tell you that fractals, a repeating shape, are found in fern leaves. Another might mention how the Fibonacci sequence, created long before it was observed in nature, was relatively recently found in pine cones or petals of flowers. This is one approach.

 

      An artist, though perhaps not all of them, might say that coincidences are bound to reveal themselves eventually, and that really, there is no objective logical order to the universe. Regardless of each individual’s viewpoint, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the abundance of maths found in life, and the way it subtly opens itself to our conscience is, as interpreted by many, beautiful. And although this opinion piece does not seek to define art, it is not hard to see why some may feel that it is. 

As mentioned before, we are creatures that look for order. Art, in whichever way it might present itself, is no exception. If rhyme, metric, metaphor and tone did not exist, would poetry be what it is to us now? If colour stopped existing, if clearly defined styles of painting were to blend into one mass of paint, would painting be as awe-inspiring, touching or meaningful to us as it is now? Why does this not apply to the natural sciences and mathematics? 

 

      Both, in their many fields use, yes, equations and formulae and a logical series of steps to find a solution, but are these not very similar to differently sized paint brushes of different textures or the ink a writer uses to create stories? These are the tools that we use to then innovate, as humans do. They are the stepping stones which allow us to create a canvas of thought, a poem of ideas. 

It is true, as well, that oftentimes these are exact areas of the human mind, and a common counterargument to the hypothesis of this piece is: “Art and literature do not have exact answers which can be answered by a computer. The sciences and mathematics do. Thus, they cannot be an art because they are not open to interpretation.” This argument is fundamentally flawed, however, because although they do have exact responses many times, they almost just as often, do not. Particle and quantum physics rely on such principles, and that is why it is constantly debated over in its respective community. The fields of science all arose because we looked at the sky, the ground, space, ourselves and began to observe. Fine arts do much the same. They arose when people looked at our world and ourselves, and began to paint, write, draw, photograph. It may not be the same as people comparing their feelings in relation to a piece of art, but the parallels between the two must be recognized. An oil painting on a canvas, after all, is not so different from the Resolution of Singularities proof (Hironaka) of 216 pages projected on a colossal blackboard splattered with white chalk.

 

      It may be said, as well, that every area of thought is an art. Because those are the things that make us human. Humanities, arts, sciences, maths, literature, they all stem from a single desire to explore, and they all, in a myriad of ways, seek to achieve goals that are not so different from each other. The sciences and maths just so happen to have gone by the route of one question: “What if?”.