D O C . 5 0 A R T I S T I C A N D S C I E N T I F I C E X P E R I E N C E 2 0 7
51. “The Common Element
in Artistic and Scientific Experience”
[Einstein 1921a]
Published February 1921
In: Menschen. Zeitschrift neuer Kunst 4 (1921): 19.
What do artistic and scientific experience have in common? Where the world ceas-
es to be the scene of personal hopes, wishes, wants, where we face it as free crea-
tures, admiring, questioning, beholding, there we enter the realm of art and science.
We do science when we reconstruct in the language of logic what we have seen and
experienced; but when we communicate through forms whose connections are not
accessible to the conscious mind, yet we intuitively recognize them as something
meaningful—then we are doing art. Common to both is the loving devotion, the
being above the personal, removed from our will.
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