Science, Art, and Dinosaurs

摘要

All science involves what we might call "art" in the sense of requiring intuition, creativity, and inspiration (whether to grasp the underlying causal connection between seemingly unrelated observations or to construct an elegant experimental design). But in a few disciplines, science also closely intermingles with the fine arts, such as painting and sculpture. Dinosaur study is one such discipline. Exchanges between science and art have helped public perception of dinosaurs closely track research. For well over a century, artists have rendered fleshed-out dinosaurs living in their ancient environments. Through the "dinosaur renaissance" of the 1970s and the explosion of interest with Jurassic Park in the 1990s, dinosaurs reached the mainstream of popular culture and became a multibillion dollar industry. Not surprisingly, dinosaur artists have proliferated and thrived, and dinosaur art has emerged as a legitimate genre.