gone division.

This state of the contemporary spirit has been recognized often enough, b u t its consequences have not been drawn. If chaos had for its only definition the coexistence of tendencies contradictory to one another, our period would certainly de serve to be called chaotic. B u t we believe th a t these contra dictions are merely surface ones. There is this rem arkable circumstance which we can observe today: sciences which differ widely in their objects are begin ning to resemble each other in their methods. A continued and extensive search for exact knowledge is at the bottom of this growing resemblance. I t is being recognized in all quarters th a t the ideas which we have taken over from the past are both too complex and too crude. A transition period m ay affect two observers in very different ways. One m ay see only the chaos of contradictory tra its and m utually destructive principles; the other may see beneath all this confusion those elements which are working together to open the way for new solutions. I t is not a simple thing to decide between two such judgm ents, to determine which has emphasized the essential m arks of the time. We need some objective guide to w hat is going on in the depths of the period, some sign by which we can determ ine whether or not its dis persed energies are being brought into united action. A com parison of the methods which govern its m ajor activities, its thinking and feeling, m ay afford us such an objective criterion. John Dewey, in his Art as Experience, points out th a t com p artm en t alization of occupations and interests brings about separation of th a t mode of activity commonly called practise 5 from insight, of imagination from executive doing, of significant purpose from work, of emotion from thought and doing.* Each of these activities is then assigned its own place in which it m ust abide. Those who write the anatom y of experi ence then suppose th a t these divisions inhere in the very constitution of hum an n atu re. I t is ju st such an evolution which lies behind the doubt as to whether science and a rt have anything in common. The ques tion would not be raised except in a period where thinking and 12

H ave science and art anything in common?

feeling proceed on different levels in opposition to each other. In such a period, people no longer expect a scientific discovery to have any repercussions in the realm of feeling. I t seems unnatural for a theory in m athem atical physics to m eet with an equivalent in the arts. B ut this is to forget th a t the two are form ulated by men living in the same period, exposed to the same general influences, and moAred by similar impulses. Thought and feeling could be entirely separated only by cut ting men in two. We have behind us a period in which thinking and feeling were separated. This schism produced individuals whose inner development was uneven, who lacked inner equilibrium: split personalities. The split personality as a psychopathic case ^ d o e s not concern us here; we are speaking of the inner dis harmony which is found in the structure of the normal person ality of this period. W hat are the effects of this inner division? Only very rarely do we encounter a m aster in one field who is capable of recog nizing workers of the same stature and tendency in another. Contem porary artists and scientists have lost contact with each o th e r; they speak the language of their time in their own work, b u t they cannot even understand it as it is expressed in Avork of a different character. The great physicist may lack all understanding of a painting which presents the artistic equivalent of his own ideas. A great painter may fail entirely to grasp architecture which has developed out of his own principles. M en who produce poetry which is purely an expression of this time are indifferent to the music which is contemporary in the same sense and to the same degree. This % our inheritance from the nineteenth century, during which the different departm ents of hum an activity steadily lost touch with one another. The principles of laissez-faire and laissezaller were extended to the life of the spirit. Throughout the nineteenth century the natural sciences went splendidly ahead, impelled by the great tradition which the previous two hundred years had established, and sustained by problems which had a direction and m om entum of their own. The real spirit of the age came out in these researches in the realm of thinking, th a t is. B ut these achievements
Separation of thinking and feeling

T he split personality

The split civilization

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were regarded as emotionally neutral, as having no relation to the realm of feeling. Feeling could not keep up with the swift advances made in science and the techniques. The cen tu ry s genuine strength and special accomplishments remained largely irrelevant to m ans inner life. This orientation of the vital energies of the period is reflected in the m ake-up of the m an of today. Scarcely anyone can escape the unbalanced developm ent which it encourages. The split personality, the unevenly adjusted man, is sym pto m atic of our period.
Unconscious paral lelisms of m ethod in science and art

B ut behind these disintegrating forces in our period tendencies leading tow ard unity can be observed. From the first decade of this century on, we encounter curious parallelisms of m ethod in the separate realms of thought and feeling, science and art. Problems wdiose roots lie entirely in our time are being treated in similar ways, even when their subject m atter is very dif ferent and their solutions are arrived a t independently. In 1908 the great m athem atician Herm ann Minkowski first conceived a world in four dimensions, with space and tim e coming together to form an indivisible continuum. His Space and Time of th a t year begins w ith the celebrated statem ent, H enceforth space by itself, and tim e by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality. I t was ju st a t this Lime th a t in France and in Italy cubist and futurist painters developed the artistic equivalent of space-time in their search for means of expressing purely contemporaneous feelings. Some less spectacular duplications of methods in the fields of thought and feeling also date from this period. Thus new basic elements designed to perm it the solving of problems th a t had ju st been recognized were introduced in construction and p ain t ing around 1908. The basic identity of these elements will be discussed in P a rt VI, Space-Time in Art, Architecture, and C onstruction.

\ineteenth-century popularization of the sciences: em phasis on results

Only a small p art of the full range of the sciences can be m astered by a single man. Their specialized inquiries and complicated techniques of research make any far-reaching competency impossible. But, even ap art from this impossibil-

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