To start of this essay, I will presume that some areas of knowledge seek to describe the world, while others seek to transform it. According to the Oxford English dictionary, the definition of describe and transform are to mark out or draw and make a marked change in form, nature or appearance respectively. It also defines art as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination while defining ethics to be the moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity. I relate the Arts to describing the world as there are many several forms of art used that can portray the world from the artist’s perspective. Whereas, I recognise Ethics to seek transformation of the world as the moral rules created for a society to follow through different theories of ethics can be changed and altered as time passes to preferably suit the need and beliefs of those in the society. However, in the Arts, work can be created purely for the sake of entertainment while in the ethics, there may be cases where moral reasoning is unable to help in persuading the adjustment of rules to fit moral principles.
Different forms of arts are often used to by artists to portray the physical aspects of the world from their viewpoint. A famous artist that majority of people would know, Vincent Van Gogh, has painted numeral variations of the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. For instance, the Wheat Field with Cypresses, The Starry Night and Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy are all different paintings created by Vincent Van Gogh that all came about from the same view seen from his asylum room. Although the paintings are of the same view, they all look different as Vincent Van Gogh had been viewing the same scenery at different times of the day, allowing him to see the contrasting points of the area from diverse viewpoints. Hence, Vincent Van Gogh was able to paint the views he had observed, describing the world as he had personally seen. Previously in school, I have also attended a workshop held during the Chinese New Year celebrations. During this workshop, students were given the chance to make and design Chinese fans as they liked, to represent their thoughts of a “new year”. As for myself, I had adorned my fan with different colour splatters, trying to create an impression of fireworks going off. Fireworks had been the first thing to come to mind as they are launched every year during the countdown to a new year, implying celebration and festiveness. Therefore, I was able to describe the world in my own view in the theme of “new year” through decorating fans.
Conversely, there may be forms of art that do not specifically describe the world but instead made for audiences to enjoy. In the past, I had to be part of production of a play at school. We had picked a scene from Macbeth to play out, then creating the settings and sound effects to fit the scene and lastly buying the necessary costumes and props. Although there was no doubt that this stage produced by us was a piece of art, it did not specially describe the world in any way. My team had created this performance with the intention of stirring up the audience in hope that they would react enjoyably to the short part of the play. For the chosen scene, we had also tried to create a mysterious atmosphere, hoping to communicate to the audience through the sound effects used. Responses from the audiences were good as many had clapped and cheered for us as the play ended and although the quality of work was not the best, it was the best we could do to convey the scene with the resources we had. Therefore, it is certain that this was a piece of art according to the three criteria to consider something as art stated in the Cambridge University Press’ Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma textbook, however, it did not describe the world. Nevertheless, the play was written by Shakespeare and is a form of literary art. It can be observed that through Macbeth, Shakespeare had been describing the world by showing human’s nature to be greedy and selfish through the actions Macbeth had taken because of his desire to gain power. Thus, it can be concluded that while art can seek to describe the world, it depends on the intentions of the artist and the background behind how the artwork has been created.