Searching the Internet can be scary. You never know what you might find. Okay, bear with me for a minute. This post may wander around a bit before I get to the point. Hopefully it's worth it! I was sitting in our Pediatric Grand Rounds (PGR) yesterday morning - actually, it was my turn to introduce the speaker, who just happened to be our Department Chair. The title of her talk was simply, "Pediatrics." Her presentation was phenomenal - check it out if you want, the link on our website will be active for about six months, as all of our PGR presentations are now. Our Chair happens to be a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases, so her talk focused mostly on how the treatment of infections such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, and tetanus, previously almost uniformly fatal, has evolved over time. One of her most profound observations, however, was how novels published in the early 19th century helped change the attitudes around childhood diseases.
At one point, infectious diseases were thought to be due to character flaws. Only those with some underlying character flaw or immoral lifestyle died of infectious disease (again, this was long before the discovery of the erm theory of disease by the French scientist, Louis Pasteur). However, the publication of novels, such as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, or Charles Dickens' Bleak House drew attention to the poor living conditions in the cities of Victorian England (in the case of Dickens' Bleak House and some of his other works) or simply showed that characters who were otherwise of good character succumbed to some of the common diseases of the time (tuberculosis, commonly known as consumption, in Wuthering Heights and scarlet fever in Little Women). It probably helped that our Chair was an English Literature major in college. Regardless, she made a statement that art often drives understanding, inquiry, and eventually improvement.
I thought her observations were incredibly interesting. As a matter of fact, I started trying to remember a common phrase that I had once heard. Was it "Art imitates Life"? Or maybe it was the other way around? I wasn't sure. So, during my free time at lunch, I looked it up on Google. Big mistake! As it turns out, there are two schools of thought. The ancient Greeks, most prominently Aristotle and Plato, believed in a concept that they called "Mimesis" - the representation or imitation of the real world in art and literature (according to Merriam Webster's online dictionary). In other words, according to the ancient Greeks, "art imitates life."
Okay, sounds good and makes sense, right? Well, apparently there is another school of thought, perhaps made most famously by the author, Oscar Wilde (see his 1889 essay, The Decay of Lying). Wilde states rather emphatically, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." Okay, now I am confused! Which is correct - mimesis (Aristotle and Plato) or anti-mimesis (Oscar Wilde, among others)? It probably doesn't matter, and after reading a little about both, my brain started to hurt.
So, back to the whole point of this post! What I thought was most profound about our Chair's talk was the fact that she drew attention to something that feel is very important - the Arts. We need the Arts. Recall how Arts helped change the opinions and attitudes of people living in Victorian England. The Arts, in this case, led to an appreciation that, counter to what was widely believed at the time, even those of good moral character can die of infectious disease. One could even argue that this changing paradigm indirectly led to the discovery of the germ theory of disease! Art is important, because it makes us think. We can learn to appreciate different perspectives about the world around us. We can learn about the great world that exists outside of our own immediate environment.
Our Chair ended her talk with a challenge. With the growing emphasis on the STEM disciplines in high school and college, coupled with the decreased emphasis (and funding) of the Arts, who will write the next novel or paint the next painting that leads us to shift our paradigm and see the world differently? It's a good question. Who indeed?
As the parent of 3 kids in elementary school, I find it disheartening that Art class has been even further diluted by adding it to the STEM curriculum (now called STEAM). As an engineering major in college, I was required to take Art and Lit classes during my first 2 years and I found that perspective extremely beneficial to my development.
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