Religious people obviously believe in the human spirit, but as the quote below from Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an admitted "skeptic", notes, even non-religious people recognize the difference too.
Tyson has a show on the Nat'l Geo channel titled StarTalk where he has interviews and panel discussions mixing science and pop culture. This short speech by him came at the end of episode 19, season 3 "Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter". I thought it very profound.
"You know when I think about creativity in art and science, I see what's similar but I also notice what's different.
And what's different is, if Beethoven were never born, nobody would ever compose the 9th Symphony. That came out of him and nobody else. Whereas if Einstein were never born, somebody would have eventually discovered relativity. He was kind of ahead of him time, so it would have taken a little longer. Might have been a combination of scientists, but he is discovering a preexisting thing in the universe. So the creativity of the scientist is wrapping our head around a preexisting reality. Whereas the artist has no preexisting reality. They can create a reality. And maybe it's a little to far for whoever is looking at it to understand it at the time so we all sorta drag behind it and eventually say "Hey! Wow, they were onto something". 'Cause that's the true moving of a frontier forward. Did what you do kinda leave people behind and they gotta run and catch up after you? So, while both fields are deeply creative, in science, the universe is the judge, jury and executioner of our creativity. In art, in music, the judge, maybe the ultimate judge, is the human spirit and the human soul. And that's what it looks like from the cosmic perspective."
Tyson has a show on the Nat'l Geo channel titled StarTalk where he has interviews and panel discussions mixing science and pop culture. This short speech by him came at the end of episode 19, season 3 "Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter". I thought it very profound.
"You know when I think about creativity in art and science, I see what's similar but I also notice what's different.
And what's different is, if Beethoven were never born, nobody would ever compose the 9th Symphony. That came out of him and nobody else. Whereas if Einstein were never born, somebody would have eventually discovered relativity. He was kind of ahead of him time, so it would have taken a little longer. Might have been a combination of scientists, but he is discovering a preexisting thing in the universe. So the creativity of the scientist is wrapping our head around a preexisting reality. Whereas the artist has no preexisting reality. They can create a reality. And maybe it's a little to far for whoever is looking at it to understand it at the time so we all sorta drag behind it and eventually say "Hey! Wow, they were onto something". 'Cause that's the true moving of a frontier forward. Did what you do kinda leave people behind and they gotta run and catch up after you? So, while both fields are deeply creative, in science, the universe is the judge, jury and executioner of our creativity. In art, in music, the judge, maybe the ultimate judge, is the human spirit and the human soul. And that's what it looks like from the cosmic perspective."
