Art - The Path To Knowledge

By Luiz Fernando Pereira

A university must produce and organize knowledge. Indeed, this fact does not seem to suffer disputes. However, what is the knowledge that a university produces and disseminates?

In this short essay, which serves as a conceptual basis for a wide-ranging epistemological discussion, the authors propose questions about knowledge, whose answers have been sought by the contemporary academy. However, the research is more focused on questions than on answers. The important thing is to ask the right questions.

We invite the members of the academic community to participate in this theoretical reflection on knowledge, in order to support our research activities, extension, teaching and graduate studies.

The growing and unstable transformations the world has been going through are reflected directly in production, recording and distribution of knowledge, not to mention the value changes that the traditional knowledge has suffered, as it is hastily abandoned by unfounded news. Revisiting the concepts that form the bases of our science serves to verify their validity, effectiveness and socioeconomic, political and cultural importance.

Courage to re-examine openly the beliefs that we embrace in the practice of our sciences is the virtue that defines, par excellence, the academic researcher.

“If Biology can save the humans and the Earth, the arts can save the soul…” (Luiz Fernando Pereira)

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”

A. Einstein.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781787107816

Luiz Fernando Pereira

LUIZ FERNANDO PEREIRA – Majored in Biology from PUCPR in 1981, MSc in Biochemistry from UFPR in 1991 and PhD in Biochemistry/Bioenergetics, from UFPR in 1999. Professor at PUCPR and FAP (UNESPAR). Experience in physiology and biochemistry. Works on themes toxicology, blood vessels, and electrical phenomena activity on the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM). Emeritus editor of Biology Studies (ISSN 0102 – 2067). MARCOS H. CAMARGO – Lato sensu graduate in History of Contemporary Thought from PUCPR in 1987, Economics and Sociology from PUCPR in 1988, Master in Communication and Languages from Tuiuti University in 2003 and PhD in Visual Arts from UNICAMP Institute of Arts in 2010. Postdoc from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro at the School of Communication graduate program. Professor at the Arts College of Parana (UNESPAR), where he teaches Philosophy, Aesthetics and Semiotics. Has experience in the area of Communication, Semiotics and Languages, with emphasis on Aesthetics.   SOLANGE STECZ – PhD in Education from UFSCAR. Master in History from UFPR. Member of the Brazilian National Committee of the Memory of the World Program, UNESCO – MOWBRASIL. Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Arts of the State University of Paraná (UNESPAR). Professor at the Film and Video Course at UNESPAR/FAP. Counsellor for the audio-visual area of the Culture State Council of Paraná (2020/2022). National Secretary at the Research Centre of Brazilian Cinema (CPCB) Director of the Cinematheque of Curitiba (2008/2013).

Book preview

About the Authors

LUIZ FERNANDO PEREIRA – Majored in Biology from PUCPR in 1981, MSc in Biochemistry from UFPR in 1991 and PhD in Biochemistry/Bioenergetics, from UFPR in 1999. Professor at PUCPR and FAP (UNESPAR). Experience in physiology and biochemistry. Works on themes toxicology, blood vessels, and electrical phenomena activity on the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM). Emeritus editor of Biology Studies (ISSN 0102 – 2067).

MARCOS H. CAMARGO – Lato sensu graduate in History of Contemporary Thought from PUCPR in 1987, Economics and Sociology from PUCPR in 1988, Master in Communication and Languages from Tuiuti University in 2003 and PhD in Visual Arts from UNICAMP Institute of Arts in 2010. Postdoc from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro at the School of Communication graduate program. Professor at the Arts College of Parana (UNESPAR), where he teaches Philosophy, Aesthetics and Semiotics. Has experience in the area of Communication, Semiotics and Languages, with emphasis on Aesthetics.

SOLANGE STECZ – PhD in Education from UFSCAR. Master in History from UFPR. Member of the Brazilian National Committee of the Memory of the World Program, UNESCO – MOWBRASIL. Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Arts of the State University of Paraná (UNESPAR). Professor at the Film and Video Course at UNESPAR/FAP. Counsellor for the audio-visual area of the Culture State Council of Paraná (2020/2022). National Secretary at the Research Centre of Brazilian Cinema (CPCB) Director of the Cinematheque of Curitiba (2008/2013).

Dedication

Our deepest gratitude goes to our family for their unflagging love and support.

The authors.

Copyright Information ©

Luiz Fernando Pereira and Marcos H. Camargo and Solange Straube Stecz 2023

The right of Luiz Fernando Pereira and Marcos H. Camargo and Solange Straube Stecz to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398400795 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781787107816 (ePub e-book)

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First Published 2023

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUCPR) and Faculdade de Artes do Paraná (FAP)/UNESPAR for the opportunity and support all along our careers as professors.

The authors.

Reading Mode

Most institutions that support and provide incentive to research focus on scientific, technological and innovative development. Regarding the research in art, though, criteria applicable to the field have not yet been reassured since many do not consider this area of knowledge as a legitimate technology and an innovation generator. It is necessary to minimise the epistemological prejudices against research in art, which is why we publish this essay in order to contribute to the debate on art as an epistemological knowledge, able to develop technology and innovation in different fields of general interest.

The fact that the agencies that support research often have a scientistic profile can be justifiable to the extent that an economical bias always collides with the public and private financing, predicting the development of technologies which may be more ‘appropriate’ for the market. However, if the purpose of these institutions is to promote the development, innovation and dissemination of knowledge, we emphasise here the condition of aesthetics (art) as effective knowledge, which has been as crucial to the social and political-institutional goals of society as the scientific and technological research has. For this reason, in this short essay, we engage in a contemporary reflection on the context of knowledge formation, under a perspective that denounces the epistemological bias (ideological) of common sense.

The Academy still takes some time not only to find a good definition for the kind of knowledge that art develops (If it is true that art does produce some knowledge! some people think), but also to build a model of cultural policy which goes beyond the mere entertainment, the expansion within the institutions and dialogue with society. Still much discussion is required so that, in fact, culture is understood in its three dimensions: as a symbolic expression, a right to community life and potential for economic development. It is necessary to sensitise managers, teachers, students and university agents to the idea that culture is, at the same time, the set of elements that identifies a people and the basis for the social transformations, which should guide the pedagogical and civic training of the academic community.

This essay does not intend to eliminate the cognitive prejudice that falls on the types of knowledge that are not linked to the current scientism. However, the way in which the topics are covered here aims to overcome the isolation imposed by the epistemological traditionalism, so that the thought, science, art and culture can re-establish cognitive ties capable of facing dogmatic divisions that hinder research in several areas of knowledge still nowadays.

Here, we intend to demonstrate the human knowledge from an aesthetic point of view, as we look from the art at the other types of knowledge. We want Philosophy and Science to see themselves, however, from an artistic point of view. Perhaps this way, starting from the perspective and epistemological displacement experience, we begin practicing a less logicist thought and search for a less scientistic technology.

What Knowledge Is

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought,

I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy

has meant more to me than any talent

for abstract, positive thinking."

– A. Einstein

Over the past 200 years, the importance of technoscience has only grown in the west, establishing among us a dominant ideology known as ‘scientism’.

People of common sense, when faced with modern works of art, contemporary or non-western, think they are able to criticise them peremptorily: they do not understand their proposals, even so, they do condemn them. When they bump into Leibniz’s, Euler’s, Maxwell’s and Einstein’s equations, nonetheless, they bow in silent respect to knowledge they admit they do not understand, but do respect – that is scientism.

Without disregarding the strategic value of technoscience, but even reaffirming it and collaborating with its development, we must remember that the issue has always been, in reality, to expand knowledge. Therefore, the scientific knowledge bias should not be generalised to all areas.

The root of the word ‘cognition’ (knowledge), refers to the name (gnomen) ¹. In other words, it originally meant to give a real name to things. It is an intellectual operation, which named concepts built from the definition of some general characteristics and common to groups of specific things. E.g. ‘chair’ is a noun that is also a concept because it encompasses and defines qualities common to a group of similar things, such as legs, seat and backrest – but if you add ‘wheels’, it is no longer ‘chair’, because it will fall into another concept: transportation.

For the ancients, there might just be true knowledge if the logos (word, speech, mind, idea, reason and cosmological order) should draw up a proper name for a class of things/ideas. The uniqueness of the logos to obtain true knowledge has become a dogma of thousands of years in the west, to the point that even today many consider any other sources of knowledge invalid (fake), especially those derived from the cognitio sentiviva (aesthetics).²

In its principle, the western thinking has established a method by which the reason can reach the truth even before the occurrence of the facts upon which it can issue judgment: the a priori deductive reasoning was and has still been the most prestigious inference mode among the thinkers and scientists. Nevertheless, the anticipation of the future, through the knowledge of the behaviour patterns of reality, ended up generating the arrogance of reason, which thinks it contains the whole world in their ideational abstractions. "Converting the full amplitude of the logos into ratio, the measure and the standard are favoured (…). This dogmatism comes from the idea of the logos as a reduction of the diversity of what is real (the infinitude of opposites, the mystery of difference) in the empire of the unity." (SODRÉ, 2006, p. 25)

Understood as the method to achieve the good thought, logic (the science of logos) has become synonymous with intelligence, to the extent that these two instances are intended to understand the mechanics of the rules, standards and codes that govern the manifestation of things. But the codes developed by man are not natural orders, only human interpretations of the world, with which the mind constructs a fixed and peaceful utopia, protected from the transforming friction that the diversity of what is real is imposed upon us.

Perhaps the most frustrating of all the difficulties about knowledge is the impossibility to get out of our human condition, to judge, with exemption, what someone can actually know. Such inadequacy also reaches the other judgments of knowledge, because nothing can we measure if not according to our own nature – a process called anthropocentrism. Here lies the largest of all the temptations that haunt the knowledge, because many succumb to the vanity of believing in the possession of the definitive method to reach