When Science and Art Play Together
When art helps us deepen our understanding of nature, art becomes research. Eduardo Rincón, co-leader of the Agriculture Section, engages artistically and scientifically with his objects of study and talks about his oscillation between the two. He tells his story with science and art.
We grew up on a large farm in the high desert in central Mexico. My brother and I could ride the horses to the horizon and sleep there and have fires and watch the stars. It was very, very inspiring to go to nature and find the beauty and look for the answers to those big questions that we all have as young people. I thought I could find this passion for nature in biology, inspired by the work of many naturalists. I went into science thinking I would find it there, and at the beginning, I was very happy. Biology is amazing. During my studies, I worked in three laboratories, first in biochemistry and then in one with the beautiful name of The Origin of Life Laboratory. I thought, okay, this is it; now we’re going to find out how it all began. But it was very cold for me. We were studying something really beautiful—layered sedimentary formations like stromatolites—but I thought we were not even asking the question, “What is life?” So, I moved to tropical plant ecology. I studied plants in the tropical forest for seven years, and I was happier. The living interactions between all levels of animals, plants, and other beings are only equaled by the coral reefs. There is no mathematics capable of really understanding these highly complex interactions. I needed another way. At home as children, we were taught to draw like you are taught to eat with a fork. If you were explaining something to my mother, she said, “I don’t understand—can you draw it?” During my studies in the tropical forest, I did a lot of drawing and even made some money with scientific drawing.
Then came my first really big crisis. One day, I was in the forest studying the distribution of land ferns. I had a fisheye lens, a 360-degree lens, and I was taking pictures of the sky because in the tropical forest understory, light is a limited resource. The trees form what’s called a forest gap, which changes seasonally because trees fall down in storms and open gaps in the canopy that create the forest dynamics. If you look at two hectares in a flatland with no plants, it’s not that big. But in a place full of dangerous animals and deadly snakes, with an irregular volcanic floor, making a census in two hectares of land is quite challenging. I was trying to assess the distribution of ferns, and I looked at the photograph of the forest gap, and I said: I will never really understand what is happening through these methods. I was very sad and scared because I’d thought science could explain everything. This crisis me to go to art. I thought, “I have to find another way of trying,” and this became my methodology.
This text is an excerpt from an article published in the (online exclusive) Goetheanum Weekly. You can read the full article on the website. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can get to know the Goetheanum Weekly for 1 CHF./€.
read moreMore Natural Science Section: Evolving Science 2024
Title image Eduardo Rincón’s desk