On the Power of Fine Arts Pictorial Imagery in Science Education

This chapter illustrates the use of pictorial artistic images in teaching scientific concepts and the nature of science. One example is Giotto’s fresco of the stigmatization of St. Francis. Its interpretation associates an artistic image of a philosophical idea with plane mirror features facilitating the expression of the idea. Specific implications of this case for teaching optics are suggested. Other pictorial images are discussed in the intention to suggest them for using in the teaching of science at school. These images can facilitate hermeneutic reconsideration addressing the meaning and nature of scientific knowledge, its specific features in forms especially appealing to people for their aesthetic value, and imagination and the surprising discovery of aspects easily missed in a disciplinary instruction of scientific technicalities. These aspects are of holistic importance in public education. Finally, science presents an image of reality in human mind. This image may also be expressed in artistic form.