Foreword: Towards a "New Renaissance" of the Beautiful Scientific Arts

1. Introduction

In its extensive 2001 report entitled “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance”, the National Science Foundation (NSF) promoted a “New Renaissance” based on the convergence of nano-bio-info-cogno technologies (NBIC). This idea was soon after embraced by the European Union. Thus, the NSF initiative introduced a new bold mainstream into industrially developed countries and regions, which it is nowadays firmly rooted in Euskal Herria, where its historical territories’ institutions have accordingly developed ambitious policy regarding research, development, and innovation (R&D+i) plans. These R&D+i plans focus on science and technology, but remarkably, make ample allowance for the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

In all the above mentioned NBIC fields there have been significant innovations in the last two decades, as well as relevant advances in their associated basic sciences that underpin their impressive technological developments. However, the “New Renaissance” has adventured further away, and has already reached the ethical fringes of the neurosciences. As Prof. Yuste (BRAIN Initiative® and Columbia University, New York) points out, the foreseen capability of decoding the thoughts of the humans in their own brains, amplifying their senses or modifying their memory content, must bring to the fore the so-called “neurorights” in order to protect humans’ mental privacy against harmful neurotechnological practices. A nice example of the necessary convergence between technological and humanist viewpoints in the “New Renaissance” era.

NBIC-like converging-type programs have not only had systemic effects in multiple fields of science and technology (advanced new tailor-made materials, artificial intelligence, robotics, synthetic biology, space exploration, cosmology, etc.), but have also revolutionized the social sciences (social networks, online advertising, legal informatics...), the arts (video games, net-art, digital art...), and traditional humanistic studies, like cultural heritage, digital humanities, creative economy, linguistic diversity, etc. The recent emergence of generative artificial intelligences represents an outstanding example[1] of the benefits rendered by these (challenging) interdisciplinary NIBC-like programs. AI systems based on Large Language Models have demonstrated their ability to engage in dialogue with people, paint pictures, compose melodies, answer all sorts of questions, and even produce “decent” short poems and stories. They can also automatically generate software programs and manage large s, whether scientific, economic, social, linguistic, or personal. However, achieving all these goals requires to put on place stable, interdisciplinary, and long-term R&D+i policies. Big Data demands significant and continuous funding. During the “first Renaissance”, arts and sciences were economically supported by the generous private patronage of the wealthy members of the uppers social classes. The 21st century has given birth to new forms of patronage, that coming from public institutions, and that coming from private corporations and companies. The New Renaissance has an economic dimension.

In 2003, the European Union designed and launched a much less ambitious convergence program. In 2009, it extended that program to the humanistic and artistic culture, focusing exclusively on archives, museums, and public libraries of the Member States. The disclosed report ignored many forms of cultural heritage; in particular, the preservation and processing of digital documentation that continually surges on the Internet, referred to as the “Memory of the World” by UNESCO in 1992. The European Union experts’ committee of 2003 used the same expression as the NSF, The “New Renaissance.” However, they did not clarify which Renaissance they were referring to, or explain why we are witnessing a New Renaissance in the 21st century. If we consider only the “European Renaissance,” it is essential to analyze its history and its various realizations. The first observation is that the Renaissance was very intense in some countries (particularly Italy) but weak in others, where Christian orthodoxies from the Middle Ages continued to prevail. There were cities like Florence that played a role comparable to today’s Silicon Valley. Others did not. The Renaissance in Europe in the 15th century was not universal; it had specific focal points. It is so today. The “New Renaissance” has not been uniformly embraced by all countries around the world. A fact that may have profound economic and demographic consequences in the near future.

In this foreword article, the relationship between science and art in Italy, where the concept of the Fine Arts along with its sister, the notion of New Science (Vico), was originated is addressed primarily. Today’s major technological systems[2] (like the Internet) can be mapped to those of that time (the printing press, in particular, but also Renaissance architecture). The Italian Renaissance brought about many changes, but we focus on two: (i) the emergence of Modern Science (Galileo, Kepler, Huygens, Newton...), which occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries, and (ii) the development of the Humanities, including literature and history, in contrast to the Divine Letters (sacred books), which had constituted the canon of theologically valid knowledge during the Middle Ages. It should be remembered that the arts were the driving force of the Italian Renaissance. Thanks to their momentum and innovations, modern sciences gradually emerged. Of course, mathematics, whose hybrid scientific-artistic nature had already manifested itself in classical Greece (Pythagorean and Alexandrian schools), was also crucial for the emergence of modern science, whose vanguard was Galilean physics, according to which “nature is written in mathematical language” (Il Saggiatore, 1623).

Two examples are worth mentioning. Namely, the Renaissance painters tackled significant scientific problems, such as the theory of colors, optics, and perspective, before scientists did. Similarly, Renaissance and Baroque music contributed to the scientific study of acoustics, including theories of sound and light. The notions of time and space were also studied first by artists and later by scientists. The asymmetric interrelation between science and art was very close during the Renaissance, not only in Italy but progressively also in other European countries (Netherlands, France, England, Germany, etc.). It could even be said that the value of “beauty” was transferred from Renaissance art to modern science. Beauty had been an important value in ancient Greece, not surprisingly given that the Platonic tradition was crucial to the emergence of arts and sciences in ancient Greece. Still, during the Renaissance, it became a dominant value, to the extent that the beauty and simplicity of certain mathematical formulas (Newton's equations, Huygens' notations, Leibniz’s calculus) played a decisive role in the scientific debates in the first Academies and Scientific Journals of the late 17th century (London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, etc.).

In this vein, it is worth noticing that the present monographic issue, centered on the beauty in the arts and sciences, pays special attention to mathematics, not only contemporary but also modern and classical mathematics, whose resurgence in the 16th century was pivotal for the progress of Renaissance arts and sciences.

Today, the sciences and science-based technologies are at the forefront of knowledge, without undermining the fact that important innovations have also emerged in the artistic fields throughout the 20th century and in this first quarter of the 21st century. Photography and cinematography provide notable examples of the close relationship between science and art, generating forms of beauty comparable to those of Renaissance paintings. Therefore, one can speak today of Scientific Fine Arts. Namely, the Fine Arts of the Renaissance era are now renewed in various contemporary sciences and technologies, hence the term “New Renaissance,” which originated in the United States but has spread to many countries, and permeated modern societies, and many fields of knowledge. This monographic issue shows the close connection between various scientific and artistic practices, both during the Renaissance and in the 21st century. This is why we propose the motto “scientific fine arts” to concretize the notion of the New Renaissance.

However, the term "renaissance" itself refers to much older times when science and art were also closely intertwined. This happened not only in pre-Christian Europe but also in China and Korea and even in some Amerindian civilizations. The Silk Road connected Chinese culture with southern Europe through Muslim cities such as Baghdad, where a significant scientific and artistic renaissance occurred in the 8th century after Christ. Nonetheless, the Italian Renaissance drew heavily from classical Greece, where the distinction between episteme (knowledge) and doxa (opinion) was made, and where philosophy, logic, arithmetic, geometry, theater, music, painting, and Western medicine flourished. The resurgence of these forms of scientific and artistic knowledge in Italy and Europe in the 16th century made it possible the emergence of the Modern Era, understood as the rebirth of Greco-Roman antiquity.

The recovery of the classical Greek scientific and artistic knowledge was made possible by new technological systems, such as printing, engraving, and Renaissance cities, which were understood as disruptive social innovations that broke with the feudal order and promoted the gradual emergence of open cities and towns. As mentioned earlier, in these cities, generous patronage favored various forms of scientific, artistic, and technical creativity. Cartography serves as an example of direct ACT (art, science, and technology) convergence, given the importance maps have had in the Modern Age. Without precise and geographically accurate maps, it would not have been possible to reach America or circumnavigate the globe by sea. Similar things can be said about new forms of patronage in the Iberian Peninsula, stimulated by new forms of trade and industry, which broke the ecclesiastical monopoly on science and art.

If what the Renaissance was in Italy and some European countries in the 16th and 17th centuries is brought to the fore, one immediately sees that one of its main characteristics, besides its deep humanism, is its ability to simultaneously promote sciences and arts, as well as to foster scientific, technical, and artistic creativity through patronage. The ACTF interconnection (art, science, technology, and funding) was key in pro-Renaissance Italian cities and might be key again in the “new renaissance” initiative proposed in the US and Europe. One of the greatest achievements of the Italian Renaissance, the Encyclopédie Française, a cornerstone of the European Enlightenment, came century and a half later, but it was entirely Renaissance in its essence and conception, for science, arts, and crafts were treated on an equal basis. This is why it had so many subscribers and readers, much like today’s Wikipedia, which covers all types of knowledge, as long as they are verified, unlike what opinion social-networks currently do. The ACT linkage, the main key to the European Renaissance and its Enlightenment derivatives, which were pro-scientific and pro-artistic, also flourished in North America, where an authentic Euro-American renaissance took place on the East Coast, based on the creation of important universities, museums, libraries, and cities open to knowledge and entrepreneurial creativity.

One of the first sound scientific institutions on the American continent was the American Academy of Sciences and Arts (AASA). It was created in 1795 and is still active. It cultivates most scientific disciplines and it is engaged with dissemination of the arts and letters. Incidentally, at the end of 2022, the AASA published a collective monograph on artificial intelligence, something that Jakiunde also did around the same time in Eusko Ikaskuntza’s RIEV journal1. The content of this monographic issue of the RIEV journal was presented in a series of lectures and debated at the Jakiunde Forum held in Aranzazu in November, 2023. A nice illustration of the openness of current R&D+i systems in Euskal Herria.

This new monographic issue of the RIEV, the third under Jakiunde's auspices, aims to promote convergence and interrelations between scientists, artists, and engineers, including entrepreneurs. Indeed, it is in order to speak of business sciences, and also business arts. Contemporary scientific, technological, and entrepreneurial practice, like current artistic practices, is deeply marked by the great transformation that nano-bio-info-cogno technologies, first, nowadays complemented with data technologies, are triggering in the most diverse fields of science and the arts, and also in business, finance, politics, healthcare, and social activity in general. Are we really witnessing a renaissance of the values and humanism of classical Greece or Renaissance Italy? These are some of the questions open to reflection and debate. Such a challenge should not be alien to an Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters like Jakiunde.

As a final note to this presentation, we will evoke four statements put forward by two prominent Jakiunde academicians, namely, Pedro Miguel Etxenike and Miguel Zugaza, formulated during a memorable Innobasque dialogue, two years ago, on “culture, science, and beauty”:

“Creativity is the essence of both art and science.”
“Now, art and science are at the center of the city.”
“There has to be a balance between the fields of science and the arts.”
“Science and art need freedom, and they provide freedom.”

These four ideas lend support to the “scientific fine arts” motto, which gives this RIEV monograph its title. In their dialogue, Etxenike and Zugaza agreed and disagreed, as usual among scholars. Along with the points of convergence, they highlighted a number of important differences between the arts and sciences. According to Zugaza, “the discoveries of science are eventually surpassed with time”; in contrast, “art adds up, not losing any of its past components.” Etxenike nuanced this by saying, “science is progress; art is both change and continuity; but science is also rebellion, rebellion against what came before.” They also disagree on a central topic of “scientific fine arts”: whether truth is beauty and beauty is truth, as famously asserted by writer and poet John Keats. Etxenike distanced himself from this claim, recalling Faraday, who said, “Nothing is so beautiful as to deserve being true.” On the other hand, Zugaza maintained that “beauty must be linked to truth, and in this sense, science and art come together again.” The dialogue became more intense when Etxenike stated that “when I speak of the beauty of science, I do not mean a tangible beauty but an intimate, structured beauty, the kind that Poincaré talks about.” Intelligible beauty. A great theme, especially in this age of screens and artificial intelligences, some of which are intelligible and artistic, while others are not.

The debate remains open. This monographic issue of the RIEV is aimed at contributing selected fresh materials to the debate. A handful of Jakiunde academicians, with very diverse professional and academic backgrounds, have produced the articles collected in this issue thanks to the excellent coordination and peer review evaluation work carried out by the two guest editors who prepared this monographic issue, Dr. Naroa Ibarretxe (University of Deusto) and Dr. Roldán Jimeno (Public University of Navarra). Our sincere thanks to both, as well as to the authors of the articles that make up this issue.

Ugalde, Jesus M.[3]
Echeverría, Javier[4]
Editors in Chief