艺术的价值

Even as scientific and technological breakthroughs dominate modern life, art forms from folk music to award-winning novels remain irreplaceable. The core truths about life that arts convey, which science and technology cannot communicate, centre on subjective human experience, shared emotional legacy and moral interpretation of progress.

First, science quantifies and explains universal mechanisms, but it cannot articulate the nuanced, personal texture of human emotion. For example, neuroscience can map the brain activity triggered by grief after losing a loved one, but Frédéric Chopin’s Funeral March or a poem by Du Fu mourning wartime separation evokes the exact hollow ache of loss that data cannot replicate. These works help people name feelings they cannot put into words, validating individual experiences that cold empirical analysis ignores.

Second, arts preserve the collective, context-specific human memory that technological records often strip of meaning. A historical database can list casualty numbers of the Second World War, but Anne Frank’s diary or Picasso’s *Guernica* captures the fear, hope and absurdity of war from a human perspective, reminding later generations of the cost of conflict beyond statistical tolls. Technology stores facts, but arts carry the intangible spirit of eras and communities.

Finally, arts challenge us to question what progress means, rather than just enabling it. While artificial intelligence and gene editing offer powerful new capabilities, artists explore the ethical dilemmas these create — such as novels examining lost human connection in a social media age — forcing audiences to reflect on what gives life value, a question outside the scope of scientific measurement.

In sum, arts anchor us to the human side of life, which science and technology, for all their utility, can never fully capture.