A Theory of Theories

[dream_weaver]

  Painting Theory

Goethe famously said in 1807 that painting "lacks any established, accepted theory as exists in music". Kandinsky, in 1911, reprised Goethe, agreeing that painting needed a solid foundational theory, and such theory should be patterned after the model of music theory, and adding that there is a deep relationship between all the arts, not only between music and painting.

Music Theory

Music theory has its origins rooted back as far as 1500 BCE. 3300 years later, Goethe makes his observation, and 100 years later, Kandinsky extends it to not only music and painting, but recognizes that such relationships exist in all the arts.

A google search for "theory of theories" leads off with:

Scientific theories. In science, the term "theory" refers to "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment."

 

I am completing this year, listening to the Atlas Shrugged audio-book (Scott Brick edition) while following along with the text from The Objectivist Research CD-ROM and comparing them both to the 35^th edition paperback, noting a few distinct differences in wording along the way. The struggles that Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden face along their way arise from aspects of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through the ages.

Music theory with its acknowledged historical roots going back so far, is also the theoretical area Rand acknowledges as the most mysterious to her. She expounds on painting and writing with much greater mental confidence and acuity than in the realm of music.

Rather than struggling to provide greater objectivity to realm of the arts, many aficionados of her works tend to use the arts as the "Achilles heel" of her writings to try to undermine and lend credence to the validity of subjectivity therein. Perhaps I am struggling with John Galt's heeding to Dagny in The Utopia of Greed, pg. 749:

You will not enter [Atlantis] until you learn that you do not need to convince or to conquer the world. When you learn [this], you will see that through all the years of your struggle, nothing had barred you from Atlantis and there were no chains to hold you, except the chains you were willing to wear.

It is baffling to me the degree of diversity and animosity that seemingly arises from the same source of material.