Mindful of a stated Project 2061 goal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, emphasizing that “scientific literacy includes seeing the scientific endeavor in the light of cultural and intellectual history,” and in the continuing spirit of narrowing the gap between the “two cultures” by enhancing STEAM awareness and education, this essay illustrates, quite literally through well-known works of Western art, the striking parallels between fundamental themes in physics and the visual arts through history. These connections include: the identification of microcosm–macrocosm analogies in prehistoric proto-science; the beginning of the appreciation in pre-classical antiquity of the lawfulness of nature under the aegis of a Divine Lawgiver; the rise of rationalism and the first theories of the architecture of matter during the so-called “Greek miracle”; the overlapping role of theology’s “handmaiden” during the emblematic medieval Age of Faith; Renaissance renovations and the triumph of the “mechanical universe” as the capstone of the scientific revolution in the early modern period; the influence on physics of the Romantic notion of an underlying unity in all of nature, and the increasing abstraction in both art and physics during the nineteenth century; and, finally, the parallels between twentieth-century art and the physics of relativity and quantum theory, concluding with examples from modern cosmology.

铭记美国科学促进会的“ 2061 计划”目标，强调“科学素养包括从文化和思想史的角度看待科学事业”，并本着缩小“两种科学之间的差距”的持续精神。通过增强 STEAM 意识和教育，本文通过著名的西方艺术作品逐字逐句地阐释了历史上物理学和视觉艺术的基本主题之间惊人的相似之处。这些联系包括：史前原始科学中微观世界与宏观世界类比的识别；在神圣立法者的庇护下，前古典时代开始认识到自然的合法性；在所谓的“希腊奇迹”期间，理性主义的兴起和第一个物质结构理论；在具有象征意义的中世纪信仰时代，神学“侍女”的重叠角色；文艺复兴的革新和作为近代早期科学革命顶峰的“机械宇宙”的胜利；浪漫主义观念对自然的潜在统一性的影响，以及十九世纪艺术和物理学中日益增长的抽象性；最后，二十世纪艺术与相对论物理学和量子论之间的相似之处，并以现代宇宙学的例子作为总结。