The Natural Sciences And The Arts - 1179 Words

People often argue about what constitutes progress, and things that some regard as progress other consider to not be progress at all. In my opinion it is the development towards an improved or more advanced condition. However what I perceive something to be could be biased due to my beliefs and value system, this is a limitation which must be considered when discussing progress in reference to the natural sciences and the arts. Reason and imagination play an important role in both understanding and comparing progress in the natural sciences and the arts but, while the imaginative insights of a scientist must ultimately be provable, those of artists need only to be reasonable. The interactions between these ways of knowing vary between the†¦show more content†¦Therefore the title must be approached differently, allowing for the development of the claim that progress in the natural sciences is more beneficial to society than in the arts. It is apparent that the knowledge gaine d from the natural sciences is generally considered to be the more reliable and true area of knowledge, opposed to the arts. Logic and reason are used as its primary ways of knowing which allow for the gathering of information through analysing data and observing experiments. Therefore we make the assumption that by gaining new information, through experimental practices, we are making progress in the development towards an ‘improved’ condition. This type of scientific progress can be classified as methodical (the invention of new methods of research, the refinement of research) and cognitive (increase or advancement of scientific knowledge) progresses. One example of this is the Eliminate Dengue Programme, which aims to develop a natural method to reduce the spread of dengue. The research team have shown that their approach reduces dengue transmission when the Wolbachia bacteria is introduced into mosquitoes in laboratories and affected communities, for example Yorkeys Knob which is where I live. Progress has indeed occurred, where dengue mosquito populations in Yorkeys Knob have been successfully reduced, if not completely removed. However, the counterclaim that progress in the natural sciences can have