“When all was finished, it cannot be denied that this work has carried off the palm from all other statues, modern or ancient, Greek or Latin; no other artwork is equal to it in any respect, with such just proportion, beauty and excellence did Michelagnolo finish it.”
Giorgio Vasari, 1550
David, the breathtaking masterpiece by Michelangelo, represents the pinnacle of Renaissance sculpture, the result of countless hours in practice, planning, and observation of human forms. Carved from a single massive block of Carrara marble which had been discarded by other sculptors, Michelangelo’s creation embodies confidence and power. The body’s position, the facial expression, and even the veins popping in the neck all betray a determined youth on his quest to slay a giant. You can learn a lot of anatomy, physiology, and psychology by studying David. But nobody would confuse the statue with a living man.
And why not?
This statue never moves, it is twice the size of a man, and it feels like cold stone instead of flesh. Its proportions are wrong, perhaps intentionally so. Cut it open, and you will find dust instead of a beating heart. Michelangelo’s David is not a man. It is just a model that provides ways to think about man.
Science is like that. Like art, science is a creative endeavor. Scientists do not discover truth any more than Michelangelo discovered David inside the stone.
For example, Sir Isaac Newton did not discover the law of gravity; he invented it. His model replaced Aristotle’s 2,000-year-old idea that things fall because they seek their natural place in the universe. Newton proposed that bodies attract each other in proportion to the product of their masses and inversely to the square of the distance between them [Fg = G(m1m2)/r2]. Both ideas explain why a cannonball dropped from a tower goes down, but only Newton’s model explains why the moon hangs in perpetual freefall around the earth.
Newton’s invention is elegant and useful, even taking men into space, but it is not true. For example, Newton’s model fails to explain the wobbly orbit of Mercury. To correct the deficiencies of Newton’s theory, Albert Einstein invented a model of gravity in which objects bend the unified field of spacetime, pushing them towards each other. Although Einstein’s Theory of Relativity explains the paradoxical orbit of Mercury, even his invention has shortcomings. In the subatomic world of Fermions and Bosons, Einstein’s theory just doesn’t work.
A model does not have to be universally true to be useful. Despite its many limitations, science does two things incredibly well. First, it shapes what you believe by informing on what is not true. This is because the scientific method is an iterative process that tests ideas against independent observations. Second, brilliant scientists compile observations into theories of various aspects of the universe. In this way, scientists and artists have much in common. Both create models that provide ways to conceptualize the complex, stimulating new thoughts and ideas.
Scientific models should not be confused with truth. Truth is all around you, in nature. Scientific models are ways to think about nature when you close your eyes, when your viewpoint is obstructed, when you cannot see nature clearly. Scientific models are merely shadows like the ones on Plato’s cave. The Allegory of the Cave described the art of science long before scientific principles were articulated.
