0
Interview
9 March 2025 2.00 h

David bueno

Specialist in neuroeducation, author of ‘The art of being human’

“We have lost the art of conversation and we no longer talk to each other”

“It’s been shown that before they can speak, children can already use philosophical reasoning”

The arts are a unique ex­pres­sion of hu­man­ity and a key dri­ver for our growth David Bueno ar­gues in his book L’art de ser hu­mans (The Art of Being Human), which won the Josep Pla Prize 2025.

Are the arts what dif­fer­en­ti­ates us from other an­i­mals?
Yes, this is the book’s start­ing point. We call our­selves an in­tel­li­gent species and there are other species of dif­fer­ent de­grees of in­tel­li­gence but one thing no other species has is the abil­ity to gen­er­ate art. And not only the vi­sual arts, music, per­form­ing arts..., but I in­clude sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy. We have in­sisted on sep­a­rat­ing the sci­ences from the hu­man­i­ties, and in cir­cum­stances such as with ed­u­ca­tion that makes sense, but the brain processes all of them in the same way.
Should we re­think our model of ed­u­ca­tion?
I don’t think we need to re­think ed­u­ca­tion com­pletely. It’s the best sys­tem we’ve ever come up with. What we must re­think is the bal­ance and not fall into ex­tremes, so that, for ex­am­ple, when the PISA tests find we’re bad at math­e­mat­ics, we don’t rush to do more maths. If we’re al­ready doing maths, let’s just do it in a dif­fer­ent way. And this is where the arts can help. For ex­am­ple, music in­cludes math­e­mat­ics. Or lan­guage: we don’t score very well in read­ing com­pre­hen­sion but we’ve lost the art of con­ver­sa­tion and no longer speak. We can be hav­ing lunch at a restau­rant and every­one’s on their smart­phones in­stead of chat­ting. How can we ex­pect chil­dren to un­der­stand texts if they are no longer ac­quir­ing basic lan­guage skills?
In the book you talk about ‘Homo artis­ti­cus’. Do we all carry art in­side?
We all carry it in­side from birth. There are peo­ple in whom it may be more pro­nounced, like in every­thing: some peo­ple are taller than oth­ers. Well, it’s ex­actly the same. We’re all born with it but we mu­ti­late it as we get older. We’re often also told to spend more time doing maths in­stead of paint­ing, be­cause that’s a waste of time.
You argue in the book that the arts are much more than mere en­ter­tain­ment.
With­out the arts we would cease to be the human species we are. It’s also im­por­tant not to lose sci­en­tific analy­sis. Be­fore they even learn to speak chil­dren al­ready use the sci­en­tific method to learn about their en­vi­ron­ment. It’s in­nate. It’s the same with philosophis­ing. It’s been shown that be­fore they can speak chil­dren al­ready use philo­soph­i­cal rea­son­ing to in­ter­pret their en­vi­ron­ment.
Do cre­ative peo­ple de­velop a more crit­i­cal sense?
Cre­ativ­ity and crit­i­cal sense are linked. To have a crit­i­cal sense you have to com­pare what you’re told with what you know. To be crit­i­cal, you need to know things, but you need to have what is called cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­ity, to re­late what you’re see­ing now with what you know. Cre­ativ­ity is in­volved be­cause, oth­er­wise, you are uni­di­rec­tional. The arts en­hance cre­ativ­ity.
Does the per­cep­tion of art de­pend more on genes or on cul­tural de­vel­op­ment?
Both. There’s a ge­netic com­po­nent and there are peo­ple with a greater artis­tic dis­po­si­tion than oth­ers, but it’s a pre­dis­po­si­tion, it’s not de­ter­min­is­tic. But as we can’t touch genes, let’s ded­i­cate our­selves to ed­u­ca­tion. If you ed­u­cate a per­son who’s not very ge­net­i­cally pre­dis­posed to the arts, they may end up being more artis­tic than some­one who has a greater ge­netic pre­dis­po­si­tion but who gets no arts ed­u­ca­tion.
“As long as we con­tinue to talk about arts and sci­ence, there will be hope in the world,” you said upon re­ceiv­ing the Josep Pla award.
Yes, I think that’s very true, be­cause that’s the way that we will con­tinue to be peo­ple, that we will con­tinue to be human.

in­ter­view Sci­ence

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.

Published on

Most Viewed