Science, Phenomenology, and the Artistry of Vincent van Gogh

Phenomenology takes a unique position among the endeavors that purport to be scientific, it is a mode of investigation that emphasizes the intimate qualitative description of human experience rather than overt and measurable behaviors. For example, phenomenology provides elaborate descriptions of complex experiences such as love, fear, anger, and hate rather than greatly reduced measurements of those experiences with forced choice answers or scales. In this sense, phenomenology can profoundly open the range of experiences that can be investigated along with the depth and meaning of those experiences, which expands psychological understanding. Phenomenology also opens the range of methods that can be utilized to systematically collect such data—from literal narratives to poetic and pictorial inquiries, such as those we witness in museums and inspiring books (Giorgi, 1970; Merleau-Ponty, 1962).

In sum, phenomenological researchers attend to the lived world, with all its modalities and languages; and today, science—by way of phenomenology—prepares to confront this lived world, to confront perspectives once thought to be antithetical to its nature.

Art is a classic example of a perspective considered to be beyond the purview of science. But art not only provides a rich database for phenomenological inquiry, in certain important ways, its aims and methodology are strikingly parallel to those of phenomenology. Both disciplines, for example, are concerned with the lived world; both are concerned with sharability—the quality and extent to which viewpoints are communicable—and both struggle for legitimacy against the backdrop of natural science.

The approach of expressionist painting, especially as related through the eloquent writings of Vincent van Gogh, illustrates the parallels between phenomenology and art with striking vigor. Largely in his letters, van Gogh describes a mode of apprehending the world that illuminates and enlivens the principles laid down by phenomenological theorists.

"I am always thinking of the work as a whole," stated van Gogh. "[A] drawing of mine will not satisfy entirely by itself, but a number of studies, however different they may be, will complement one another; though my studies are worth nothing now, this may change later, not so much by itself as in conjunction with others" (cited in Graetz).

Consider, for example, the difference between van Gogh's studies of sunflowers and those of a botanist.

Apprehending the Lived World: The Pre-reflective Beginnings

From the outset, phenomenology is concerned with the world as it appears to consciousness. No assumptions are made about a reality independent of the observer; all that can be said about phenomena is that they mean something to someone.

In the pre-reflective, immediate perception of phenomena, meaning is latent. It is like a seed that has not yet come out into full blossom. If one can remain long enough in this pre-reflective moment, one can experience profound creative power. One can reveal many features of an event. "This primary awareness," Van Kaam (1966) observes, "this meaning-giving experience, is pre-reflective. Pre-reflective means that I am familiar with a person or thing as a part of my lived world, as something that belongs to my spontaneous experience. I have not yet thought about what this person or thing that I am meeting is."

Similarly, expressionist painters—and van Gogh in particular—sought to explore the interplay of perspectives characteristic of pre-reflective contemplation. They, too, could be considered phenomenological researchers of a sort. Referring to van Gogh, Elgar (1958) remarks that "few have paid attention to the specifically aesthetic and perfectly deliberate research from which his work proceeded." The artist himself writes: "I can't deny that for years I have devoted myself, almost in vain and with painful results, to the study of nature, the struggle with reality" (Elgar, 1958). Elsewhere, he discusses certain aspects of this study that strikingly recall the phenomenologists' pre-reflective mode of exploration:

"I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things than if one looks at things to find this or that in them. It is the same with the question of coloring. There are colors that themselves do beautifully against one another, but I do my best to make it as I see it before I set to work, to do it as I feel it. I merely grab into [nature] and catch hold of one thing or other; it will later by itself get in order and be clarified. But I do not want to begin with a predesigned plan...on the contrary, I want my plan to clarify from my studies" (cited in Graetz, 1963).

A kind of dialogue takes place for both phenomenologists and artists at this pre-reflective stage. There is an active exchange between the world and the observer. Van Gogh also evokes this dialogue in a poetic way.

"I see in my work an echo of what struck me; I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have written it down in shorthand. In my shorthand may be words that cannot be deciphered, mistakes and deficiencies, but there is something in it of what the forest, beach, or figure told me, and it is not a tame and conventional language" (cited in Graetz, 1963).

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Finally, science—by way of phenomenology—stands at the crossroads of an important synthesis. It finds it can no longer afford to ignore intuitive and artistic versions of the world. It finds, moreover, that no matter how many times it confronts the world, these unruly perspectives creep into its purview. And this is not an unfortunate development. As one pores over the history of conventional science and its accomplishments, one is struck by the overriding thought that the legacy of natural science has been an accumulation of facts and information; wisdom is not necessarily nor even consistently its by-product.

Phenomenological inquiry is an attempt to reawaken the wisdom of human consciousness. It is an attempt to explicate the data that does not readily lend itself to sensory or mathematical inscription but to tap peculiarly qualitative phenomena, the fuller, richer, rounder world glimpsed by visionaries such as van Gogh, who contrasted the beliefs of the past with the revelations of a future science. He notes:

"Once people believed that the world was flat; however, science has proved that the world is round... Now in spite of that, one still believes that life is flat and goes from birth to death. However, life is probably round and much superior in extension and capacity to the hemisphere known to us at present. Future generations will probably enlighten us on this so interesting subject, and then science itself might arrive—willy nilly—at conclusions... relating to the other half of existence" (cited in Graetz).