ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the different ways in which art and science are featured in scientific work. Broadly construed, art is not a playful sidelight in science. Laboratory work involves numerous ‘artful practices’ for rendering research materials into visual and graphic displays, and to a surprising extent practicing scientists devote considerable time and effort to attempts to create what they consider to be ‘artistic’ images. Such efforts have been particularly evident in the interdisciplinary field of nanotechnology, where images and image galleries have had a prominent role in drawing public attention and investment to the field. This chapter examines one set of projects involving efforts to synthesize organic chemicals that, when structurally diagrammed, resemble humanoid stick figures and vehicles such as automobiles. The chapter examines possible rationales for devoting immense effort to synthesize these useless chemical structures, and suggests that an experimental rationale – ‘let’s see if we can make this thing’ – overrides any utilitarian purpose of the things that are made.