ABSTRACT
Art and science would appear, at first blush, to be strange bedfellows, separated as much by their aspirations and ethics, as well as their material practices. Certainly, the apparent consensus regarding the impermeability of their categorical boundaries has two origins: first, the scientific revolution of the Renaissance, predicated in large part upon the rise of Copernican cosmology, empiricism and the systematic development of modern mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry; and second, its gradual institutionalization in the faculties of the modern university, which in the nineteenth century culminated in the, ‘segregation of the European educational system … between classical studies and scientific and technical training’ (Blair and Grafton 1992: 535). In these efforts to draw boundaries between science and art, a host of objects were sorted, approaches differentiated, and academic knowledges compartmentalized.
