This thought occurred to me while I was reading E.S.Dallas's "The Gay Science" for my uni course (19th C. lit.), based on his arguments:

"The object of science, we say, is knowledge - a perfect grasp of all the facts which lie within the sphere of consciousness. The object of art is pleasure - a sensible possession or enjoyment of the world beyond consciousness. We do not know that world, yet we feel it - feel it chiefly in pleasure, but sometimes in pain, which is the shadow of pleasure."

I would agree to a certain extent, but I think art has a more central role in human evolution than mere pleasure or relaxation. Art is the practising of intuition -the systematic mapping of the unknown- that allows us to make those imaginative leaps to which science owes its advances.

Art cannot advance without science, without technique, without those known processes to support it; and science cannot advance without the imagination that art fuels.