"I'll tell you a secret as a gift, only by looking with your heart can you see clearly. The important things are invisible to the naked eye." This is a line spoken by the fox to the little prince in the movie "The Little Prince," adapted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novel. There are things in this world that human eyes cannot see, such as radio waves and emotions.
When you look with your eyes, everyone sees the same thing. When you look with your heart, things will be different. Scientists, for example, see the world with their hearts. Newton saw the law of universal gravitation, Einstein saw the curvature of spacetime. However, they can both explain the same physical phenomenon. Artists, too, see the world with their hearts. Monet and Van Gogh saw and presented different things on their canvases, but they have one thing in common - a subjective interpretation based on the object. The painting "Water Lilies" by Monet, created after his vision deteriorated due to an eye disease, is a miracle that happened when he relied less on his eyes and could only paint based on his feelings and memories. Did anyone see the scene depicted in Van Gogh's "Starry Night" with their naked eyes before him? He painted what he imagined in his heart (based on what his eyes saw), not what he actually saw. To some extent, the naked eye is a barrier to the heart's eye. Physicist M.T. Keshe said, "In today's world, human reliance on their eyes in physics, like a kaleidoscope, has deceived their own eyes and prevented them from seeing the true nature of creation. All living beings! Close your eyes and see your material existence! See the true nature of existence in all realms of the universe!" Painter Edvard Munch said, "Nature is not just everything you can see with your eyes, it also includes the inner images that can only be seen with the soul." "True works of art come from the human inner world."
Monet's Water Lilies
Van Gogh's Starry Night
Munch's The Scream
Looking at the three paintings from top to bottom, a trend emerges where the content of the artwork moves further away from the external appearance of the object and closer to the inner feelings of the subject (human). This is also the direction of development in art (including literature). The main focus of literary art lies in the human inner world, reflecting and constructing the human spiritual world is the strength and mission of literary art. In the past, the depiction and reflection of the external world in literary art can be seen as a warm-up and training. When it matures, it will eventually enter its area of expertise - the human inner spiritual world, leaving the external material world to be studied by science, as it is currently seen as the domain where science excels.
For scientific research, those who prefer to rely on their eyes are suitable for experimental science, while those who prefer to look with their hearts are suitable for theoretical science. In artistic creation, those who prefer to rely on their eyes are suitable for realism, while those who prefer to look with their hearts are suitable for expressionism (here referring to depicting the images in one's heart, not the concept of "expressionism" in Chinese painting). According to MBTI personality psychology, those who prefer to rely on their eyes are generally S (sensing) types, while those who prefer to look with their hearts are generally N (intuitive) types.
Whether in scientific research or artistic creation, the future belongs to those who look with their hearts. Most scientific experiments are conducted under theoretical guidance, and theories are suitable for research by those who prefer to look with their hearts. In artistic creation, realism used to be one of the traditions in the West, but now it seems to have reached its limit. The world seen with the naked eye is the same, and it becomes repetitive to keep depicting it. On the other hand, the world seen with the heart is different for everyone. We need creators who look at the world with their hearts to bring new things from different perspectives and feelings.