1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

7.6 Science, Figurative Arts, Literature and Music 197
inscription, whereas its Hellenistic counterpart, of which Callimachus was
the greatest virtuoso, is a pretend inscription. Thus a cultural product of
social exigencies is transformed into an occasion for free and deliberate invention.
Also born then were bucolic poetry, the comedy of manners and
the luckiest of the new literary genres: the novel. 70
Was there a connection between science and the new character of art and
literature? A positive answer is suggested by the simultaneity not only
of their first appearance but of their reappearance in modern times: the
same features in art were reacquired in the modern age together with the
scientific method.
Science of course lent art technical and conceptual tools, as we have seen
concerning the link between optics, scenography and painting, and as we
shall see in music.
But there is also a deeper relationship between science and art. The main
aspect of the scientific revolution lies in that the creation of culture became
a conscious act. It is this awareness that gives rise to artistic experimentation,
causing styles and genres to multiply. At the same time, the focus of
interest shifts from cultural categories, “mythicized” (in different ways)
in both the archaic and classical ages, to the individual, who becomes recognized
as the creator of such categories, and to the individual’s concrete
life. Thus subjects from everyday life grow in importance and frequency
of representation: in painting, portraits, landscapes and still lifes; 71 in comedy,
characters and situations that mirror the spectator’s world.
The novel’s appearance is linked both to the new idea of cultural production
as a deliberate invention, and to the new type of target audience
(individual readers) and mode of reading (private). 72 As in modern Europe,
many aspects of Hellenistic art depend on the existence of a public
of readers and buyers of art works.
In classical Greece the word “music” (©) meant music, singing
and dance, thought of as an indivisible whole. Our notions of “music” and
“musician” date from the early Hellenistic period. 73 The second half of the
70 The Hellenistic origin of the novel was long obscured. It was thought that Greek-language
novels first appeared in the late imperial age; this changed in 1945 when a papyrus was found in
Oxyrynchus that dated from the first century B.C. and contained fragments of the Novel of Ninus.
Now many scholars think that the novel originated in the second century B.C.
71 Particularly significant, in this respect, are pictorial representations of the painter’s atelier or
some other craftman’s shop. Paintings with such subject matter are known to have been made by
Antiphilus, active in the court of Ptolemy I Soter (see, for example, Pliny, Naturalis historia, XXXV,
114, 138) and by several others, such as Philiscus and Piraeicus (Pliny, Naturalis historia, XXXV, 112,
143).
72 For an analysis of the relationship between Greek literary works and their modes of enjoyment,
see [Gentili: PP].
73 See, for example, [Gentili: MR].
Revision: 1.9 Date: 2002/10/11 23:59:33