How art can help science and t'other way about

Reading William Shakespeare could give physicians a fresh insight into the links between emotion and illness, a retired doctor and scholar believes.
Dr Kenneth Heaton says many doctors fail to connect psychological problems with physical symptoms - and argues the playwright could help them do it.
He listed dozens of examples in which Shakespeare described these phenomena in his works.
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Artist JMW Turner's work may have been influenced by scientific theories that he overheard, new research suggests.

While the painter was in the Royal Academy, he was in the adjacent rooms to where scientists of the Royal Society held regular meetings.
Turner biographer James Hamilton says the thin walls would have allowed the artist to overhear their discoveries. He believes one of Turner's works makes use of Sir William Herschel's theories about the sun.

And of course BBC Radio 3's Free thinking Festival has a number of  interesting talks and discussions to download or listen to online including landscape architect Charles Jencks' call for a new cosmic art arguing that understanding the universe is too important to be left to scientists and theologians..........


Guy Morgan