| Nursing is accepted as a practice discipline grounded in both art and science. So assumptive is this belief that our extant literature and professional language is replete with references to art and science. Yet this notion of nursing as part art, part science remains critically unexamined, ill defined, and poorly applied. Most of us accept an intuitive awareness that nursing is something more than the application of factual knowledge in health care settings, but research, often empirically based, and trends such as evidence-based practice, are seen as the proper avenues to growth of nursing knowledge. What constitutes the art of our practice is poorly explicated, and much less associated with growth of the profession, leaving us to wrestle with the tension between our art and science. Without a clear ability to integrate art and science, and conceptualize the interface of the two, our science remains incomplete, and our professional uniqueness difficult to articulate. While our art is creative and our science is systematic, we have viewed them as separate and discrete. Because of this, we have a science that is at times reductionistic, research findings that at times are disassociated from the phenomena we are trying to explain, and care practices that focus often on disease and curative notions. Our research methods and perspectives have relied heavily on our foundational sciences that are most often the product of other disciplines, and we have at times distanced ourselves from our art, almost embarrassed, viewing it as a less valuable approach to knowledge development. Each is necessary but not sufficient for the growth of nursing. Science provides explanation, searches for our truths, for causal explanations, and for the comfort of control. Yet it is our art which gives room for mystery, wonder, and myth, elemental to human relationships that are at the heart of nursing. Science determines the manner in which we practice, the “truths” we arrive at, and the esteem with which we as a disciple are held, but it is perhaps our art that most influences the outcomes of that care.
This presentation will introduce the concept of orientability, and the research into the constructs of known, unknown and unknowable, as a possible bridge for us to unite our art and science. It will present findings of a review of the historical development and application of the concepts of art and science in our extant literature, and conclude with suggestions for the application of non-orienting constructs as one means to unify the two concepts and allow nursing to become truly a holistic practice profession.
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