There is no science without art

My personal reflection on Kristen Souvlis 's emphasis on art and storytelling:

There is no Science without Art. Art helps with Abstraction and Coherence. Help me explore Kristen’s point:

Abstraction is one of those underrated tools we take for granted but use all the time. It’s like a hidden superpower for simplifying complexity, seeing connections, and unlocking creativity. Without it, progress would be slower, if not impossible. But like any powerful tool, it has trade-offs. Misuse can create confusion or even stifle innovation. Used well, it’s a lever for sense-making and discovery.

At its core, abstraction is about reducing details to highlight the essentials. Think of specialised language in professional education—it creates a shared shorthand, letting people communicate more effectively. Or maps, which compress a massive amount of spatial knowledge into symbols you can interpret instantly. This kind of compression enables you to absorb information immediately instead of getting bogged down in the details. The best abstractions don’t just clarify; they open up new possibilities.

Take art and music. They abstract from material reality, allowing you to imagine the novel and unexpected. That’s why art has been so central to human evolution—it helps us see differently, think differently, and innovate. But abstraction isn’t just about simplifying; it’s about?connecting. By stepping back and looking at things through a more abstract lens, you create room for novel combinations and ideas to emerge. That’s why tools like metaphor, graphic recording, and even singing can be so powerful in workshops—they break old patterns and open up new ways of thinking. They’re not the goal; they’re the means to get there. The other side of this is coherence. If abstraction is about stepping back, coherence is about making sure the picture still makes sense when you zoom back in. It’s about making the pieces fit together in a way that works. The mistake people make is thinking coherence comes from looking at the whole. But here’s the thing: humans can’t handle the whole. It’s too big, too messy. Trying to think holistically just leads to platitudes and vague ideas that never go anywhere.

Instead, coherence comes from focusing on the micro-level. Small, meaningful changes shift the system's pathways, creating solutions that emerge naturally. It’s evolutionary, not prescriptive. You don’t have to force coherence; you just have to let it emerge.

So, abstraction is a tool for innovation, and coherence is the check that ensures it holds together. The real magic happens when you get both working together—zooming out to see the possibilities and zooming in to make them real. That’s where the breakthroughs happen.

In one of my previous posts, I explored what being “Live like an Artist” is like.

https://medium.com/@vibhorpande/mindsets-for-tinkering-explained-9d844a74a438

Ultimately, the lesson is that our systems evolve when we balance abstraction with coherence. That’s where real creativity and problem-solving happen—not in oversimplified blueprints or grand holistic visions but in the interplay between the abstract and the actionable. That’s how progress works.

Thank you, Innovation Central Brisbane , for sponsoring and Queensland Futures Institute for providing the platform for such a fantastic discussion.

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Bonus: Learn more about the "Artistic Expression" and Birth of New "Radicals."