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The Correlation Between Arts and Crafts and a Nobel Prize
An anonymous reader writes: The stereotype of the scientist or engineer is that he prefers facts, reason, and objectivity over more artistic pursuits. But the Priceonomics blog points out an interesting correlation: "the more accomplished a scientist is, the more likely they are to have an artistic hobby." It continues, "The average scientist is not statistically more likely than a member of the general public to have an artistic or crafty hobby. But members of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society — elite societies of scientists, membership in which is based on professional accomplishments and discoveries — are 1.7 and 1.9 times more likely to have an artistic or crafty hobby than the average scientist is. And Nobel prize winning scientists are 2.85 times more likely than the average scientist to have an artistic or crafty hobby." Is this more evidence that we in the science and tech fields undervalue art and pure creativity?
No, it doesn't mean that at all.
I'm not surprised that higher level scientists and engineers are generally more well-rounded than people who are only scientists and engineers by trade. When I look around my peer group, I see a pretty clear correlation between being better at their field, and being more well-rounded in general. Specialization and focus has its place, but in my industry (tech) the people who are "moving the ball" (vs. the break/fix positions) are also more well-rounded, not less, and that isn't limited to tech-specific things at all.
I think the real myth is that scientists and engineers don't appreciate/value/"get" art. The stereotype of the autistic super-scientist just doesn't hold up to real life for me at all, on average at least. Do you like music? Is it for the mathematical purity of the composition, or do you like the way it makes you feel? Congrats, if you picked the latter, you're into the arts.
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Most adults give up hobbies as they get older. Generally only my most driven and self motivated friends have maintained hobbies into adulthood, and those that have tend to have 3 or 4 hobbies. Just being driven enough to maintain a few hobbies into adulthood would likely make you 2 or 3 times as likely to have an artistic hobby as an average person, and Nobel laureates would certainly be driven individuals.
"Is this more evidence that we in the science and tech fields undervalue art and pure creativity?"
No, it shows that the better your brain functions, the more attention span you have to pay attention to many fields. Those of us who have to work our brains hard for those occasional flashes of brilliance don't have enough ooomph left over for "frivolities".
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Having free time is probably part of it, but another thing we have to ask is, what is art?
I know of one top-notch math researcher who has had quite a degree of success. He has a good position within a large institution, he has many publications, he is held in high esteem by his colleagues, and so on, and so forth. Yet in his spare time he has taken up sculpting. His preferred subject of these sculptures? Penises. He'll sculpt them out of clay, out of wood, out of plaster, out of styrofoam, and whatever other material he can find. He doesn't do it for a profit; his garage is littered with sculpted penises of various shapes and sizes. I was last in there maybe a year ago, and he had over at least 2,000 different sculptures he had made over the years.
While I know him from a sport we both play casually, I doubt that his colleagues from the math world know about his sculpting. Even if they did, I don't know if they would consider it "art". They would probably consider it a form of degeneracy. I know his wife is unsure about it all. She doesn't like the fact that there are literally cocks taking over her garage. She doesn't like having to move styrofoam penises off of the dryer before drying laundry.
So is this fellow's academic and research success due to his artistic hobby? I don't know. To be honest, I'm not even sure if it should be considered art. He's not even very good at it. Some of his creations have a penile shaft that's one color, and the scrotum is a different color. Some of them are bent and misshapen. Is something still "art" even if it's done very poorly? Which brings us back to our original question, "What is art?"
There are much simpler explanations than the one implied by the article, namely that "playing music causes scientific ability" or even "musical and high level scientific ability have a common cause". The Nobel Prize is not awarded based on objective scientific criteria, it is a judgment call by a bunch of primarily upper middle class European men steeped in European bourgeois values, which include that educated and smart people ought to play an instrument. And at that level, many of the scientists involved know each other personally, and music is a social activity that allows people to get to know each other more. It wouldn't be surprising if the Nobel Prize committee simply had a bias towards awarding prizes to scientists who they know to play music or who they actually play music with.