Artist and scientist

The arts and the sciences and since have been in competition for the most lively young brains. This competition is itself the clearest evidence that good minds can fulfill themselves as well in one as in the other. Here, in fact, is one of the few psychological discoveries of our generation to which we can hold with a reasonable certainty, that the general configuration of intelligence factors which distinguish the bright from the dull is the same in one man as another, in the humanist as in the scientist. We are divided by schooling and experience; and we do differ, though we differ less, in our aptitudes; but below these, we share a deeper basis of common ability. This is why I write with confidence for laymen and scientists, because the reader who is interested in any activity which needs thought and judgement is almost certainly a person to whom science can be made to speak. It is not he who is deaf, but the specialist who have been dumb, the specialist in the arts as well as sciences.
Many people persuade themselves that they cannot understand mechanical things, or that they have no head for figures. These convictions make them feel enclosed and safe, and of course save them a great deal of trouble. But a reader who has a head for anything at all is pretty sure to have a head for whatsoever he really wants to put his mind to. His interest, say in mathematics, has usually been killed by routine teaching. Few people would argue that those whose taste for poetry has not survived the school certificate are fundamentally insensitive to poetry.
Yet they cheerfully write off the large intellectual pleasures of science as if they belonged only to minds of a special cast. It is not a special sense. It is as wide as the literal meaning of its name : knowledge.