2.1.2 Carving
A popular cliche in philosophy says that science is pure analysis or reductionism, like taking the rainbow to pieces; and art is pure synthesis, putting the rainbow together.  This is not so.  All imagination begins by analysing nature. Michelangelo said that vividly, by implication, in his sculpture (it is particularly clear in the sculptures that he did not finish), and he also said it explicitly in his sonnets on the act of creation.
When that which is divine in us doth try
To shape a face, both brain and hand unite
To give, from a mere model frail and slight,
Life to the stone by Art's free energy.
J. Bronowski
graphic
Paleolithic stone-carved female forms
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