All the world's a stage… and a laboratory
To dream, to investigate; each is a wing and culture needs both to fly.
Civilizations are measured by their artists and performers as surely as by their scientists and mathematicians. The Greeks and the Romans, the Inca and the ancient Chinese—historians trace their rise and fall, their ages of gold and dust, through the rhythms of their music, the structure of their paintings and the line of their sculpture as well as by the elegance of their logic, the depth of their observation and the boldness of their experimentation.
The border between art and inquiry, like other walls we humans create, crumbles at a touch: when we admire an ancient pyramid or modern skyscraper, are we oohhing and ahhing its aesthetics or its engineering? Where would each be without the other?
At Fresno Pacific University we practice the artistic and pursue the intellectual. AIMS Hall of Mathematics & Science offers novice scientists a stage on which to perform research usually reserved for graduate school. The fine arts facility now in the planning stages will provide apprentice singers, musicians, visual artists and actors the same kind of laboratory to display the fruit of their curious minds and creative muscles.
The laboratory and the stage are equally worthy as realms to explore creation, to expand faith and to make a difference.