Dear Unknown Friends:

We begin today our serialization of a lecture Eli Siegel gave in 1969: A Thing Has This. It is one in a series on a tremendous subject not understood before: the relation between art and science. These have seemed in different worlds to people, as feeling and logic have seemed in different worlds. Among Eli Siegel’s great contributions to thought and humanity is his showing that art and science are, in all their difference, also fundamentally akin; and that—further—they both have to do with the tumults, hopes, intimate worries, longings, angers, desires of every person. “Self, the arts, the sciences explain each other,” he wrote: “they are the oneness of permanent opposites.” Among the examples he gave is this:

Every person has a tendency to retreat, to “be in oneself,” and every person has a tendency to go out, to honor outwardness, to welcome expansion….The contraction and expansion in chemistry, physics, geology, are in the person. [And] a work of art is tight and expansive at once. It seems to have a depth within itself, as it goes luminously, sometimes grandly, into space and the whole of existence.

Art & Science Oppose Contempt

In A Thing Has This, Mr. Siegel is showing that 1) the matter of what a thing is, is a fundamental, also urgent, matter in both science and art; and 2) art and science are in firm though unarticulated accord on the subject.

He is showing that at the basis of both art and science is the fact that a thing—any thing, each thing—is “everything it has”; and included in this everything are all its possibilities. A thing “is not just the part you want to see or do see.”

The aesthetic and scientific matter of what a thing is is also an emergency in every person’s life, and the life of a nation. The not trying to see things and one’s fellow humans in all their fullness is oh so ordinary. The seeing “just [what we] want to see” goes on constantly, and it causes in people a dullness of response and narrowness of perception. Meanwhile, this unscientific, unartistic way of looking at things—not with a desire to see their wholeness, but in terms of what suits oneself—is the beginning of lying, including tremendous and persistent lying, and also of massive cruelty. In his preface to Self and World, Mr. Siegel explains that assuming a thing is how we choose to see it is central to contempt; and contempt, he showed, is the most hurtful thing in every person:

The first victory of contempt is the feeling in people that they have the right to see other people and things pretty much as they please….

The fact that most people have felt…they had the right to see other people and other objects in a way that seemed to go with comfort—this fact is the beginning of the injustice and pain of the world. [P. 3]

Real science and real art come from an aspect of the human self opposed to that from which contempt comes. Science and art both come from the deepest desire in a person: the desire to like the world through knowing it, to be ourselves through being just to it. And, Aesthetic Realism explains, the big fight in everyone is: that greatest, deepest desire of ours versus our desire for contempt.

Every instance of progress in behalf of justice has been an insistence that people and things be seen more in terms of their fullness, their possibilities—not in terms of some notion of them that persons with power saw as convenient. Take, for example, one of the biggest matters in our history. In the 1830s and earlier and later, the abolitionists said to the slaveholders: It is hideous, completely unscientific, and horrifically cruel, to see a black person in the way you have chosen: as someone you can look down on, own, and from whom you can extract unpaid labor—as much, and of whatever kind, you choose. The abolitionists said: This person whom you are brutalizing is as real as you are, has all the depth and manyness of feeling and thought that you have. And to the persons of the North who didn’t seem to care, the abolitionists said: You, in not wanting to see this vicious thing truly, are complicit in it.

Though the abolitionists differed among themselves, essentially their way of seeing that terrible thing, slavery, was the scientific way and the artistic way; they were joined in that way of seeing by more and more Americans. Those who had the contempt way of seeing the matter, the slaveholding way, told many lies in order to justify themselves. They exploited references in the Bible; they used phony “scientific” findings to justify themselves; they presented themselves as deeply insulted and wounded by criticism.

As we know, it was only through war that slavery ended—though Mr. Siegel said, truly, that the Civil War is still being fought, because injustice to persons of color is still to be defeated. Yet when the Civil War was won, it was the respect way of seeing—the artistic and scientific way of seeing—which won out over contempt.

At This Time

At this time, how to see a thing has become a gigantic national matter. After all, how to see a thing includes the seeing of and dealing with facts, human beings, truth, and also the magnificent US Constitution. All these are things. The American people are watching the attempt, on a large scale, to manipulate facts or simply ignore them, and to substitute for the truth something one manufactures to “go with [one’s] comfort.” We’re also looking at an effort to make that thing which is the Constitution irrelevant and replace it with how certain persons “want to see or do see.” All this involves a battle about the basis of government itself, on view extensively through the media, social and otherwise.

For the sake of our nation and our own lives, we need to see what contempt is. We need to see that both real science and art are, in how they look at things, utterly against contempt. And we need to see how the non-scientific, unartistic way of seeing, the contempt way of seeing, is in ourselves. We need to see we don’t like ourselves for it. We need to see that our limiting and changing of what things and people are makes us agitated, dull, ashamed. We need to see that the alternative—represented by all the arts and sciences—is thrilling and what we want to strive for.

We can see all this. Aesthetic Realism is the means to see it—the means for us and our nation to be proud, happy, intelligent, and kind.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

A Thing Has This

By Eli Siegel

One phase of the answer to the question what is the relation of art and science? is to be found in what a thing is. An indefinite amount of art possibility and science possibility may be found in every thing. And in today’s talk, the accent will be on the multiplicity that is present in each thing.

As I thought of this phase of the subject, a very popular poem came to mind and insisted on staying there. It is one of the poems the American people has taken to its heart. It is also about the best poem of the writer, who was a 19th-century American humorist poet and also a lawyer, and editor of a newspaper, the Burlington (Vermont) Sentinel. John Godfrey Saxe was one of the best masters of light verse: he could put lines and rhymes and syllables through their paces as he was saying something unexpected and witty, very often with puns.

The poem I’ll read is one of the important mental things of the world and shows better than any other collection of words that a thing is the possibility of being seen. That means a thing has multiplicity. It also has the abstractions of the world—as, let’s say, a dish has smoothness, roundness, weight, color, change, and divisibility, and other qualities too.

Here, the elephant is used. And whether Saxe got his story from himself or, as has been said, from a fable of India, the poem is very effective. It is a true poem. And it says something of the science and art problem: that is, any object can be seen truly (which is the emphasis in science); any object can be seen as a cause of emotion (which is the emphasis in art). When there is art, as soon as the object is seen as a cause of emotion, the things within it, while seen truly, are arranged a certain way. A painter painting a dish would arrange the depth and surface and height of the dish, and the shadows and lights, and also—which is very important—relate a dish to, perhaps, a tablecloth or a ceiling.

This poem is called “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” There is no reason in the world to patronize it. It is presented simply but with enough music, and will stand as literature. Here are the first four stanzas:

An Arrangement of Possibilities

With this poem we come to a problem which is the very depth of the critical problem. As soon as an artist looks at anything or thinks of anything, the artist wants to see what is within that thing as possibilities and then looks for an arrangement of those possibilities. This is the way a portrait is made. This is the way a cubist picture was made. There were things seen, as with Picasso, in a lute or guitar, or it could be in a clock, in a wall, a door, a doorknob. Within that thing, possibilities were seen. The possibilities of a thing are the ways it can be seen—as a person would say, “Well, you got me in a cheerful mood; I’ll lend you five dollars now. But if you’d gotten me yesterday, I’d have stolen your money.”

So there is a difference of aspect, and aspects are mighty important. For instance, when we deal with England, we have England, the political aspect; England, the ecclesiastical aspect; England, the geographical aspect; England, the literary aspect; England, the artistic aspect; England, the musical aspect; England, the botanical aspect; England, the ichthyological aspect—how many kinds of fish are there?; England, the zoological aspect—it has no llamas or giraffes; and England, the humorous aspect; England, the philosophic aspect; England, the mystical aspect; England, the feminine aspect; England, the juvenile aspect. There are more still. We can have England as seen by Palmerston, England as seen by Florence Nightingale (they were contemporaries), England as seen by Victoria, England as seen by the Prince Consort.

As soon as a thing is, it has possibilities in it through which it can be seen. Then, it can be thought of as being looked at by other things. If a fish in the Thames were describing its life, it could say that England was fairly good (it hasn’t been caught yet). That would be the fish aspect.

All of this is concerned with art and science. The aspects of a thing can be arranged so that, while the thing is still there, emotion can be from it. There can be something like art if you think of the tusk of an elephant in relation to its deep eyes. About that time, you can get an aesthetic response of a sort. If you relate the poundingness of the foot of an elephant to the pliability of its necessary tail, again you can have an aesthetic response.

“It was six men of Indostan, / To learning much inclined.” The men of Indostan themselves had various aspects. They were “to learning much inclined,” but likely they were inclined also to food, and sleep, et cetera.

The Danger That Is Specialism

“Who went to see the Elephant / (Though all of them were blind).” Now, Aesthetic Realism does say that the great danger of self is specialism. Once one takes a point of view that one can have for the whole thing, one can be described as simply wrong—but it is that from which insanity comes: the insistence that a point of view is adequate to what is being dealt with.

A mother, let us say, cannot see her son the way the boy’s friend can see him; doesn’t see the boy in the way a father does; doesn’t see the boy in a way a teacher can.

Saxe has the first man feel the elephant’s side and say that this animal “Is very like a wall!” It does have an effect of a wide kind, an expansive kind, like a wall.

The aspects of the elephant could be used in a painting with effect. You think of a wall and you think of a twirling tail, and you have drama there. Then, if you have the ear, in its mystery, and you have also the snout with a tusk, you do have something. An elephant is the one animal that has dramatically such a rich foot and such definitely white ivory.

The second man, meeting the tusk, says, “To me ’tis mighty clear, / This wonder of an Elephant / Is very like a spear!” While Saxe is dealing with objects, he’s also dealing with abstractions, because the wall is vertical and wide, while the spear, or the tusk here, is narrow, and it could be round, and also has a point.

Stiff & Pliable, Hard & Soft

“The Third approached the animal / And happening to take / The squirming trunk within his hands…” That has a phase of reality which is most important. One’s whole life is spent trying to make a one of stiffness and pliability. A big difficulty of a baby is that it accents pliability and chubbiness and rotundity and softness so much that it doesn’t have a chance to imitate a telephone pole. These two things, pliability and stiffness, are in life and in all the arts. And we have them when the trunk is related to the tusk.

The knee of the elephant is harder than the trunk but it isn’t as hard as some things. One could feel, touching the knee of an elephant—which most people have not done, even in circuses—that it is something like a tree.

We Relate Things

One could question that, how much the ear of an elephant is like a fan, but the point is sufficiently valid.

As soon as we relate these objects, we are getting next to art, because as relation is found a possible drama can be found. This goes for any object whatsoever. If you relate the sharpness of the pineapple to its juice, you’re in the dramatic field, and you’re still with the pineapple.

We come to these two facts that cover the art and science problem in outline: every thing is everything it has, not just the part you want to see or do see; and also, every thing is all the ways it can be seen. From that is: every thing is all the ways it can be related. So a thing is everything it has; a thing is every way it can be seen; and a thing is every way it can be related. This does include art lavishly, fully seen.

The stanzas of Saxe that I read are concentrated, easy, strong, firm, neat, and continuous. In other words, they have what poetry has to have.