Science is the study of what exists and how it works. It looks closely at specific information and tries to understand how it fits with what is already known or hypothesized. It helps us answer the question “What?” but has less to do with the big “whys” in our lives.
Art is a way to explore the “whys” although the arts are less about answers and more about learning how to exist in the presence of big, interesting questions. The arts have little to say about certainty, and quite a lot to teach us about uncertainty.
We need both. Science grounds us in our shared reality. The arts allow us to reach beyond that reality to intuit meanings and connections. In this way, science is like our brains: it works in predictable ways to predict what we need to survive and explore the edges of what we know. The arts and humanities are like our minds: they motivate us to explore and achieve. We don’t need facts or motivation: we need both. We are not our minds or our brains: we are a system that includes them both.
NLP is not a science. It’s a way to combine what neuroscience is teaching us about the brain and body with what we want and intuit with our minds. It’s a model of what we call learning in a classroom, and neuroplasticity in our brains, and resilient growth in our lives. It starts with the idea that we are strongest when we accept that all parts of us are us, that our brains are trying to sabotage us and our minds aren’t too limited to make useful decisions. Instead, NLP is model of using all that is available in us to live the best lives possible.
You can find out more about how the arts and the sciences are woven into NLP in this video. It takes about 30 minutes to watch.
