Creativity and Discovery: Why STEAM Matters

Creativity and Discovery: Why STEAM Matters

Most people have heard of the umbrella term STEM, but have you heard of STEAM, which is the acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics?

Many people see art as just a form of creativity and self-expression and view science as more factual and logical. Yet, “both science and art sometimes deliberately set aside strict facts in order to explore deeper truths: science through hypotheses or idealised models; art through fiction and the exploration of human experience, emotion, and meaning" [1]. Many aspects of art need the implementation of science, and vice versa. They are interconnected in the way they encourage curiosity, discovery, and new ways of thinking.

From an artist’s perspective, science is necessary during the creative process; the theory of color and lighting allows artists to create realistic shading, reflections, and color interactions. Industrial designers can also use physics and materials science to design a chair, while understanding the human anatomy helps artists accurately represent movement and form. These scientific principles allow artists to transform observations from the real world into more precise and meaningful visual expressions.

Science also requires artistic thinking to communicate complex ideas and inspire innovations. Creativity is how scientists start their journey towards discovering things. Finding creative ways to solve a problem is crucial, as it helps the process of developing hypotheses, designing experiments, and imagining solutions when there is not yet a clear answer. Additionally, visual communication through graphs, diagrams, models, and scientific illustrations also play an important role in science, as these mediums help researchers interpret data and share it with others. Without these creative and visual representations, many scientific concepts would be difficult to understand and therefore difficult to apply.

Beyond the site where creativity happens, in the public’s eyes, many scientific ideas are triggered by artistic expressions, which is a concept known as neuroaesthetics. In galleries where art is displayed, viewers’ responses to different artworks allow scientists to explore how artistic experiences influence the brain and its perception. Doctors in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other countries have used art museum visits and art activities to enhance patients’ mental and psychological well-being [2]. Viewing art helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) [3]: The PSNS is part of the autonomic nervous system that helps the body enter "rest and digest" conditions [4] and enter a state of rest, relaxation, and recovery.

This triggers your body's "reward system”, releasing “feel-good” brain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin that trigger sensations of pleasure and positive emotions" [2]; this is triggered “when we are both creating and beholding the arts or engaged in aesthetic experiences" [2].

Interestingly, throughout history, many significant artists and scientists have been involved in both art and science discoveries, such as Samuel Morse, president of the National Academy of Design, who specialized in neo-classical portraits before he changed the world by inventing the telegraph and Morse Code [5]. Or Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Nobel Prize winner who used his artistic skills to draw the structure of nerve cells and the detailed human brain [6].

The most famous artist involved in science is Leonardo da Vinci. Not only is he still regarded as an exceptional artist, with pieces such as Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, he’s also widely known as a significant figure in science; the Vitruvian Man is an illustration he created which depicts the ideal human proportion described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius. In addition to explaining the human proportions, he also “dissected over 30 corpses to study human anatomy in detail" [4], which helped him to discover the first documented descriptions of coronary atherosclerosis and hepatic cirrhosis [7, 8]. Furthermore, his detailed studies of plants and animals also allowed him to accurately represent natural elements within his compositions. Through da Vinci’s work, the boundaries between art and science became blurred, demonstrating how scientific exploration can enhance artistic expression and how artistic observation can contribute to scientific discovery. 

Science and art are fields that are deeply interconnected through the need for creativity, observation, and discovery. An artist starting a piece is a scientific process in itself, from a sketch as a hypothesis, to developing the work through experimentation, to having the final piece as a result of countless new ideas and adjustments. Similar to scientists, artists test ideas, analyse results, and make changes to achieve the desired outcomes. STEAM recognises that great advancement occurs when logic and imagination work hand in hand, proving that creativity is not separated from innovation; rather, it is the root of it.