Art and Science, Beauty and Truth, Performance and Analysis?

In this essay, I invoke the age-old conflict between the “two cultures” of art and science (C. P. Snow) as a point of comparison for understanding some of the communication problems that have plagued the somewhat analogous relationship between performance and analysis. Drawing upon some ideas that surfaced during a recent public conversation held between the novelist Ian McEwan and the theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed, I suggest that although performers and analysts express themselves in very different languages, they are both pursuing the art of interpretation, and a deeper acknowledgment of this common ground might help both cultures appreciate and learn from each other’s perspectives more fruitfully. The article includes a reconsideration of Leonard Bernstein’s 1954 television lecture on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, cited by Arkani-Hamed as an artistic example of scientific “inevitability.”