The Challenger accident may not have occurred if NASA scientists had been thinking visually.

Such is, at least, an example of the advantages of merging art and science – the focus of Dennis Dake’s research.

For more than 30 years, Dake, professor of art and design, has worked to unify the brain. Dake is researching and trying to apply the concept of “consilience”, or the linking of facts and theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation, to the arts and sciences.

Citing Edward Tufte’s book “Envisioning Information,” Dake said the accident with the space shuttle Challenger might have been prevented if the NASA technicians had been using visual information.

“The memos these technicians were passing to each other were pages covered with blocks of numbers,” he said.

Dake said that if the information had been processed into an actual picture of the rocket boosters with information about temperature at certain points, the technicians may have more readily seen the potential catastrophe.

Dake compares the different disciplines to two tribes – the dominant tribe of the word and the tribe of vision – in his paper, “A Personal Vision Quest: Learning to Think Like an Artist.”

“Little is known about the second tribe, the tribe of vision,” he said. “But it is dangerous to rely on the word because there is a danger of verbal misunderstanding.”

Dake said scientists can improve their research if they think more visually.

“Scientists are not seeing how art can help them,” he said.

Dean Biechler, adjunct instructor of art and design, cited a similar study showing how visual thinking can improve science.

“Cornell requires their medical students to take either an art history or other art class of some sort,” Biechler said. “Of those who have taken these classes, they have around 58 percent more accuracy in diagnosing disease in their patients because they have better observation skills.”

Dake has experience in both science and art.

“I had always been good in the sciences during high school,” Dake said. “But I had a vague sense of wanting to be an artist.”

Dake said he knows the exact day and minute when he realized he was an artist – during 1962 while he was in the Air Force, stationed in England.

“Sometimes I would go into London and visit the art galleries,” Dake said. “It was close to closing time at one of these galleries and security was kind of herding people to the exits. I stopped in a room and began staring at a small Renoir painting. After a few minutes I began to cry. I was not sad. I just got it. There was something. There was just something so beautiful.”

He decided to return to the United States to study art and began teaching art at Iowa State in 1971. During one summer, Dake took a psychology class.

“I took a psychology class called Sensation and Perception and that is what related to what I do with my art,” Dake said. “My professor, Lloyd Avant, guided me to the papers of Roger Sperry who says the brain is divided, with each side providing different functions.

“I thought, `Oh my gosh. That is exactly what I am interested in.’ “

Dake’s research in consilience, the divisions of the brain and visual literacy, has spawned a course at Iowa State and a national Web-based project helping K-12 teachers.

“The New Art Basics project is a database that allows teachers from across the nation to access and share ideas and art projects with each other,” Dake said. “When they log on they can also look at student art and consult with university art faculty.”

Dake is currently teaching an integrated studio art course, Sources of Visual Design, which was developed in the late ’70s when some of Dake’s students asked him to create a class where the students could follow up on his research in visual literacy.

“Part of my research is to share it with studio students here at the College of Design,” Dake said. “I try to explain the mechanics of visual thinking to my students.”

He said his students are already creative and that some of them just do not know it yet.

“I tell my students I can be a mediator of this,” he said. “I can be a guide.”

Dake said after centuries of specialization since the Renaissance, the sciences have begun to cross into each other.

“In the 20th century, there have been big breakthroughs,” he said. “The biological and physical sciences have come together into consilience. They were able to make advances because they had similar goals but different perspectives.

“In the 21st century, if we are going to make any progress, we are going to need consilience between a broader range of disciplines. The most difficult prize is consilience with the arts,” he said.

Dake said consilience already comes naturally to some cultures.

“On the island of Bali, they do not have a word for art,” he said. “They say, `We just do the best we can.’ I think that is what we need to learn.”