Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond Examines the Complex Relationship Between Science and Art

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond's book "La science (n)'e(s)t (pas) l'art" (published by Éditions Hermann) challenges the modern tendency to reunite truth, beauty, and goodness through science. From the perspective of a practicing scientist, Lévy-Leblond argues that beauty is rarely found within science itself, except when, as with Bernar Venet, the profane is confined to the exotic pleasure of foreign scripts. The beauty now at stake comes from scientific imaging, which makes concepts less opaque, but risks making science known only through visibility. He proposes an artisanal beauty achieved through long polishing of ideas. Despite reservations, brief encounters between art and science are possible: with mathematics, as in Merz or Boeno (though more about mathematical symbolism than science), and with physics, when an artist tackles a problem not to illustrate but to restore its real complexity, while scientific formalisms necessarily reduce it. Artists such as Anselmo, Penone, Charvolen, and Kowalski are cited. Norbert Hillaire praises the book for presenting these artists on the paradoxical frontier that unites art and science by separating them.