The Methodologies of Art

Another book arrived in the post last week. I have only read thirtysomething pages of Laurie Schneider Adams The Methodologies of Art and can see plenty of things going awry. This is not a book I'm going to enjoy very much, as I'll get more and more frustrated as I progress.

In her preface she talks about the prolifiration of methodologies, but I am lacking a small side note to this: stressing that not all methodologies are equally 'scientific' or are masquerading as scientific.
She draws an analogy to the interpretation of dreams. 'Works of art, like dreams are multiply detemined'. Ok, I smell parapsychology right round the corner there. I do hope it was poetic license and not to be taken literally.

In the first chapter Adams tells the reader that all methods reinforce one another'. Again, this could very well be the case, but not all could pass the rigours of scientific research.

Anyway, I'm going to delve deeper into this book, and see if I can read on without bias.

The humanities have always teetered on the edge of 'pure' academic (=scientific) research, but it is just that fine line that needs a bit of scrutiny.

I have written on skepticism and art history before, maybe I should do a full length paper about it.