ARTSCIENCE AS THE
PAST AND FUTURE

Back in 2019, one of the co-founders of EPICURUS, Dr Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, was involved in setting up a research and service-oriented project for examining the role which artscience could play in a sustainable future. Consequent to that, she has been studying, through theoretical and pragmatic lenses, how artscience is intrinsically embedded across all knowledge systems, and how the practice of its ethos could break down the overly siloed approach to learning that has underutilized the different senses, sensibilities, and intelligence of the learner (and learning facilitator).

The artscientist is someone who does not feel that using merely the tools dictated by the authorities of their discipline help them in answering the questions they pose, or even allow them to bring their own disciplinary professional engagement to a level that is satisfying and fulfilling – the sense that life is lived to the full…I would like to talk about the science-artist to denote a scientist who uses art as a research method, or even one who sees themselves as natural scientist (or one who has the temperament of a scientist), or even an engineer and technologist, but does not turn to the usual method for approaching the science – instead, they have natural affinity with the process of artistic creation (or artistic approach) to working with the science of their choice – taking on the tools of an artist and not calling themselves scientists even if they might possess some of the same specialty knowledge (or almost equivalent level of knowledge)

Excerpted from ArtScientist/ScienceArtist: Finding a Creative-Intellectual Room of One’s Own

To learn, then, logically precedes to teach. In other words, to teach is part of the very fabric of learning. This is true to such an extent that I do not hesitate to say that there is no valid teaching from which there does not emerge something learned and through which the learner does not become capable of recreating and remaking what has been thought. In essence, teaching that does not emerge from the experience of learning cannot be learned by anyone

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998