Contentious Quote for the Day: Lord Haldane on Economics and Art

" I am absolutely convinced that science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than are the classics, but the products of this stimulus do not normally see the light because scientific men as a class are devoid of any perception of literary form. When they can express themselves we get a Butler or a Norman Douglas. Not until our poets are once more drawn from the educated classes (I speak as a scientist), will they appeal to the average man by showing him the beauty in his own life as Homer and Virgil appealed to the street urchins who scrawled their verses on the walls of Pompeii.

"And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art. Personally I believe that we may have good hopes of both. The capitalist's idea of art in industry at present tends to limit itself to painting green and white stripes on the front of his factories in certain cases. This is a primitive type of decoration, but it has, I think, the root of the matter in it. Before long someone may discover that frescoes inside a factory increase the average efficiency of the worker 1.03% and art will become a commercial proposition once more. Even now it is being discovered that artistic advertising often pays. Similarly I do not doubt that labour will come to find that it cannot live by bread (or shall we say bread and beer) alone. But it can hardly be expected to make this discovery until it is assured of its supply of bread and beer."

Daedalus, or, Science and the Future, by Lord Haldane.