The basics and the sophistication: a country doctor and the art of Grandma Moses.

A picture of a doctor doing rounds in the countryside seems very distant from science, and yet even with all the achievements of biomedicine, the image of a doctor seeing a patient remains a very powerful symbol. It represents seminal interface at which medical science is adjusted to the individual’s needs. For centuries, medicine has been seen as both science and art. In the technological era, the “art” stands for the judgment, skills, and experience of the physician. To describe them in formal terms would require a complex mix of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The issue is that each of these domains is normally explored by a separate community of specialized scholars. There is a certain tension between “hard” medical science and the “softer” aspects of medicine that deal, for instance, with perceptions of illness and care: this tension surfaces periodically in discussions on medical education. It is just part of the wider issue of the relationship between science and the humanities. It was brought to light in the 1950s by C.P. Snow in the Rede Lecture, entitled “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” which he delivered at Cambridge University (1 ). The lecture sparked long-lasting international discussions and controversy. Snow talked mostly about what he saw as the division between science and the humanities in Britain. His aim was to place science and scientific education on par with the literary culture, which was then that of the power elite. He saw refocusing education on science as a precondition to exploit the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. Although many of Snow’s original arguments now sound either parochial or simply dated, the discussion continues to this day (2– 4 ). Kagan recently discussed the cultural significance and relationships between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities (4 ). What emerges from these explorations is the cultural complementarity of these 3 domains, which ask—and aim to answer— different questions. Whereas science discovers and interprets facts, the humanities explore meanings, something scientific methodology is unable to address. This complementarity has potential to clarify goals, enhance sustainability of the applications of science, and prevent ethical disasters; however, how to achieve and maintain it—particularly in educational systems—is far from clear. The painting in Fig. 1 was created by an American artist, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known as Grandma Moses (1860 –1961) (5–7 ). She was born in Greenwich, in upstate New York. After her marriage in 1887, she lived for a period in Virginia and in 1905 returned to New York, where she settled in Eagle Bridge. Artistically, Grandma Moses was entirely selftaught: In fact, she had done embroidery first and turned to painting only after arthritis made it difficult for her to hold the needle. Her paintings were spotted in the local drugstore by a passing art collector. In 1939, her work was shown in the Museum of Modern Art at an exhibition entitled “Contemporary Unknown American Painters.” Grandma Moses was then 79 years old. In 1940, she had a show in New York City, entitled “What a Farm Wife Painted,” at the Galerie St. Etienne, the art gallery founded by Otto Kallir. Eventually, the work of Grandma Moses became immensely popular. College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK. * Address correspondence to the author at: Department of Biochemistry, Gartnavel General Hospital, Glasgow G12 0YN, UK. Fax 44-141-211-3452; e-mail [email protected]. Fig. 1. Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses). The Doctor. Copyright ©1951 (renewed 1979) Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York. Science in the Arts