Joseph Duemer on Aesthetics and Instrumentalism

Please go read this delightful reflection from Joseph Duemer after a day of repotting his baby bonsai trees. I love this finish:

For all my political consciousness, I remain located in an essentially aesthetic space. But I do not make the mistake of setting the aesthetic above the social, political & historical spaces from which others write & speak. Others speak from other places & it is the totality of speaking that constitutes human Being. Clearly, these "spaces" or perspectives do not exclude each other & in fact intersect in complex ways; but speaking for myself only, I feel hard-wired to the aesthetic. I suppose there are geniuses who move freely among perspectives, but most of us, I think, are either born or early-trained to a particular way of looking at the world. This strikes me as a fortunate result of human evolution: each individual ideally can specialize in one way of looking at the world, but at the same time is capable of recognizing the legitimacy of other perspectives.

Theories of consciousness & justice need to include & account for this plurality at the heart of human Being.

I've always been fascinated by the concept of balance, yin and yang. I like how he assigns the aesthetic and the practical to separate spheres that both serve a purpose rather than to a dichotomy of competition. Those of us who tend to think on a more utilitarian level can, and should, still appreciate the beauty and necessity of the arts. That appreciation varies, of course, not only between people but within the same person at different times.

A world full of poets would be quite a lopsided world, but so would a world full of engineers or mathematicians or political consultants. Even the most hard-headed realist must shudder at the thought of a world without music. And within those spheres, I think, at their very best we find a shared perspective. The most sober of scientific realists, like a Sagan or a Gould, turns to literature, poetry and even theology for the language to express the awe with which they behold the world. Science, for all its instrumentalism, is not, at its best, in conflict with aesthetics but in conspiracy with it. At their root, the love of truth and the love of beauty are the same.