ABSTRACT
Art and science both qualify as contested concepts and both have and continue to lead to endless disputes. It is interesting to know whether there exist also more substantial overlaps between art and science that a linguistic analysis of oxymoronic concepts in art and science may reveal. Since time immemorial, rhetorical figures like oxymoron, enantiosis and paradox, in other words "essentially oxymoronic concepts", have held an extraordinary fascination in the minds of creators of poetry, literature, music and the fine arts in general. The fact that Da Vinci was both an artist and scientist may be telling in terms of the role of the senses and oxymoronic concepts for the relation between art and science. Architecture is yet another interesting field in the quest for the use of essentially oxymoronic concepts. Like literature and architecture, music too has a close connection with essentially oxymoronic concepts. These often surface through the dichotomy of sound and silence.
