Fine Science and Social Arts; on Common Grounds and Necessary Boundaries of Two Ways to Produce Meaning.

This article is a report from a research project which aims to produce a methods book for scientific research in fine arts, while keeping the distinctive qualities of fine arts-production intact. The text is structured in to parts. The first part is an account of the findings of collaborative exhibition of social scientists and artists from the field of relational aesthetics. This account establishes a striking similarity of empirical methods and modes of formulating research problems/aesthetic intentions. This part also establishes a divide between the artistic oevre and the scientific result; while the former is concrete and evocative the later is intellectual and aims at persuasive solidity. A notable difference between how the two fields treat references is also established. The second part of the text draws on constructivist social science principles, and on the institutional conception of arts production, in an endeavour to exhaust whatever similarity there is between the two fields of meaning-production. Given that certain properties in fine arts and in social science remains significant for each field after an honest attempt to merge the two, then what can we say about the distinctive features of the two fields? If certain properties of constructivist social science are distinct from fine arts, then constructivist social science is most likely a scientific way to produce meaning. Second, if artistic production of meaning can be performed scientifically, then artistic research is possible. The paper concludes by showing how there is no contradiction between the two propositions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]