“In this sense, we should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.”

—  Donald Ervin Knuth

Source: Computer Programming as an Art (1974), p. 669 [italics in source]

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In this sense, we should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the …" by Donald Ervin Knuth?
Donald Ervin Knuth photo
Donald Ervin Knuth 32
American computer scientist 1938

Related quotes

Caitlín R. Kiernan photo

“Art is not science. Even when art is about science, it is still art. There cannot be consensus, in the sense that science strives for meaningful consensus.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

(15 June 2007)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2007
Context: Art is not science. Even when art is about science, it is still art. There cannot be consensus, in the sense that science strives for meaningful consensus. And unlike science, art is not progressive. Personally, I have my doubts that science can be said to be genuinely progressive, but I'm pretty dammed certain that art is not. Which is not to say that it is not accumulative or accretionary. But the belief that sf writers are out there forecasting the future, that they have some social responsibility to do so, that's malarky, if you ask me. Writers of sf can only, at best, make educated guesses, and usually those guesses are wrong, and clumping together to form a consensus does not in any way insure against history unfolding in one of those other, unpredicted directions. People love to pick out the occasional instances where Jules Verne and William Gibson got it right; they rarely ever point fingers at their miscalls.

Joseph Beuys photo

“This is why we believe that a well-ordered idea of ecology and professionalism can stem only from art – art in the sense of the sole, revolutionary force, capable of transforming the earth, humanity, the social order etc.... Art is, then, a genuinely human medium for revolutionary change in the sense of completing the transformation from a sick world to a healthy one. In my opinion only art is capable of doing it.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

1980's
Source: Times Thermic Machine, 1982

W. H. Auden photo

“Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"The Virgin & The Dynamo", p. 62
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Jacob Bronowski photo

“In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so?”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 2: "The Habit of Truth", §11 (p. 45–46)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)
Context: In effect what Luther said in 1517 was that we may appeal to a demonstrable work of God, the Bible, to override any established authority. The Scientific Revolution begins when Nicolaus Copernicus implied the bolder proposition that there is another work of God to which we may appeal even beyond this: the great work of nature. No absolute statement is allowed to be out of reach of the test, that its consequence must conform to the facts of nature.
The habit of testing and correcting the concept by its consequences in experience has been the spring within the movement of our civilization ever since. In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so? This is the habit of truth, always minute yet always urgent, which for four hundred years has entered every action of ours; and has made our society and the value it sets on man.

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“If the advancement of the general art of programming requires the continuing invention and elaboration of paradigms, advancement of the art of the individual programmer requires that he expand his repertory of paradigms.”

Robert Floyd (1936–2001) American computer scientist

The Paradigms of Programming (1979)

Claude Bernard photo

“A modern poet has characterized the personality of art and the impersonality of science as follows: Art is I: Science is We.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. IV (1928)

Paul A. Samuelson photo

“Science is not art. Yet, despite the lack of complete identity between art and science, there is much in common among different creative processes.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Introduction to the Enlarged Edition
1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947; 1983)

Mao Zedong photo

“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Source: (zh-CN) 百花齐放、百家争鸣的方针，是促进艺术发展和科学进步的方针，是促进我国的社会主义文化繁荣的方针。艺术上不同的形式和风格可以自由发展，科学上不同的学派可以自由争论。利用行政力量，强制推行一种风格，一种学派，禁止另一种风格，另一种学派，我们认为会有害于艺术和科学的发展。艺术和科学中的是非问题，应当通过艺术界科学界的自由讨论去解决，通过艺术和科学的实践去解决，而不应当采取简单的方法去解决。

Manly P. Hall photo

“The alchemical tradition assumes that every physical art or science is a body of knowledge which exists only because it is ensouled by invisible powers and processes.”

Manly P. Hall (1901–1990) Canadian writer and mystic

Meditation Symbols in Eastern & Western Mysticism (1988)
Context: The alchemical tradition assumes that every physical art or science is a body of knowledge which exists only because it is ensouled by invisible powers and processes. Physical chemistry, as it is practiced in the modern world, is concerned principally with pharmaceutical or industrial research projects. It is confined within the boundaries of an all-pervading materialism, which binds labor to the advancement of physical objectives.

Related topics