Art and Science
Anyone who studies the history of art and science side by side will recognize that the famous grand masters of violin making in the 17th and 18th centuries were highly receptive to the methods, ideas, and discoveries of the science and arts of their time —architecture, mathematics, physics, composition, and painting. The violin, as an astonishingly ingenious acoustic system, could only have emerged in an environment of gifted empiricism. Here, innovators were at work for whom art and science could never have been a contradiction.
The great masters of the Renaissance regarded the connection between art and science as a matter of course. Their artistic works would be almost inconceivable without their keen scientific observation and curiosity, and without their sense of nature. Thus, the masters of violin making were not only artists but, without a doubt, empirical scientists as well. The violin, as a musical instrument, could only have emerged in an environment of gifted empiricism. The violin owes its history to this empirical art.
It was not until the 19th century that the art of violin making degenerated into an industrially revolutionized manufacturing process that had lost its connection to the original sources of intuitive and scientific creativity.
