As a first year, I have to take a writing class at some point. I am actually enrolled in Reading and Writing Culture: Thinking and Writing like an Anthropologist, given by Professor Armstrong. Today during a class discussion, the professor mentioned how he had strongly hesitated during his high school years between art and science, and how anthropology as a academic interest perfectly combined both.
He was explaining to us that the scientific rigor needed to produce a satisfying ethnography was considerable, but at the same time observing people and how they live their lives necessitates subjectivity too.
While Anthropology is not exactly considered either a science or an art, the process needed to fulfill an anthropological study is interesting because it requires a thought process that is in between the two.
It is necessary to apply scientific methods and objectivity to acquire data, but as they are related to the daily lives of individuals the researcher cannot be blunt and needs to tread lightly. Also, ethnography often comes in literary form, which needs to be transformed and translated into a language that all can understand.
This interested me as it made me realize that the divide between art and science in academia today is much less clear that what I was expecting; while they are two world apart if you take extreme examples such as biology and drawing, the dividing line is not always placed where you expect it.
This first week in CHEM 106 helped me realize that the domains are much more intricately mixed that I was initially imagining; while there is still a great divide and apparent complications in inter-disciplinary work, it is nevertheless possible to detect the connections.