I have been asking this question to both people who are artist and scientists by trade, and also those that simply 'dabble' but are not professionals. The interesting thing is that I haven't been able to find any real distinctions between these two disciplines, which makes me wonder why we feel the need to teach and practice art & science in completely different ways when it could very well be just two different perspectives of the same thing.
Looking at this recent article from Atlantic talking about Leonardo da Vinci's greatest work and there was one quote that really caught my attention:
That’s a typical Vasari cliché, and it’s misleading. The Mona Lisa’s smile came not from some divine intervention. Instead, it was the product of years of painstaking and studied human effort involving applied science as well as artistic skill. Using his technical and anatomical knowledge, Leonardo generated the optical impressions that made possible this brilliant display of virtuosity. In doing so, he showed how the most-profound examples of creativity come from embracing both the arts and the sciences.
I think this might be more of a philosophical question than something that I could shed light on by asking artists or scientists. But in fact I have tried to find examples of people who seem to engage in a higher level of creativity, and most of the time you find that it is difficult to describe their work as simple art or science.
Can anyone point to any philosophical argument as to why there is a need for this distinction between art and science, and where it started from?