I don't know much about Taoism--I'm going to do some reading up on it this evening. Sounds really interesting! And thank you so much for this comment. It's a really interesting question, and I had to think it over a bit before responding.
For the Mesopotamians (which includes Sumer, Babylonia, Akkad, and Assyria), they had a very distinct understanding of what constituted "science," which to us is somewhere in the intersection of intellectualism, superstition, and divination. They saw everything as potentially being a portent, and looked for “signs” that would do anything from telling the future to diagnose an illness. They would study sheep livers for anomalies, watch the movement of the stars (like horoscopes), “read” wrinkles in human skin, etc. But I wouldn’t say they really considered art to be part of that equation.
What would probably really interest you is reading up on Egyptian conceptions of art. It’s absolutely fascinating and completely misunderstood by most people. (This has given me a great article idea… thank you!) To the untrained eye, it looks very odd and primitive, but Egyptian depictions are the way they are for a specific reason. Firstly, art was standardized to an impressive degree; artists were formally trained to create their works in a very specific style which stayed consisted for 3,000 years with very few changes, except for a brief period of time called the Amarna period, and the fact that the artistic style was so different then was highly political, religious, and deliberate. The reason that Egyptian art has that distinct style in which you can see two feet and two arms and the torso rotated toward the front is that Egyptians believed that if anything was left out of an artistic work, it didn’t exist. If you depicted someone and you could only see one arm, it meant that they had one arm. If you depicted a house and only showed one room, that house had one room, so all houses had to be depicted from a bird’s-eye view. That also meant that if you defaced a work of art or crossed out someone’s name, you were literally eradicating not only their memory but their entire existence. In that sense, not only did art depict reality; it was reality. So art wasn’t just decoration; it was utilitarian. It could create reality, and it could erase reality. In a way I would say that is scientific in a way.
I am glad that this question has piqued your interest and that you were able to provide such a fascinating comment about it. To be honest I haven't come across anyone who might be able to enlighten me on this question from a historical perspective as I am trying to trace where the origin of this bifurcation might have occurred.
To me it seems like there are cultures where art & science are seen as one of the same (or at least by individuals - Leonardo Da Vinci is usually the first that comes to mind). I think many aspects of human culture show that these two concepts intertwine, in particular religion (and mythology) touches many areas of science and art, as does philosophy. Mathematics has been described as a way to describe the beauty of nature in a systematic way, and architecture bridges the gap between engineering and the natural environment (when done properly).
Maybe not many other people care about this question, but this is the beauty of Steemit! Where I could not find people in my social circles that were interested enough to ponder it further, someone who I literally just crossed path on Steemit has shed a new light on my 'investigation'. If you write an article about it I would love to see it on the Steem Magazine (@steemfreepress is an initiative started by @tonyr that I am very excited about).
Well, of course, the difference between "mythology" and "science" is very much a cultural one. There are plenty of people out there who believe that the Biblical creation story is fact and that the earth is only 6,000 years old. The entire principle of studying the Humanities at its core is to study the intersection of arts and sciences as one discipline.
I think you would really like @monicacope. She's an artist and doctor.
I think in high school they grouped the subjects into two different categories: Science and Arts & Humanities. But for some reason they also had Social Sciences. Just had a quick peek at @monicacope and it looks really interesting as well. There are so many artists here on Steemit plus a very active @steemstem group too (they just had a meetup at CERN!). Have a look at the Steemtopia Network of Learning for some names I have put together (and am trying to add to): https://steemit.com/makesteemitgreat-again/@fibrefox/the-steemtopia-network-of-learning-update-bigger-plans-ahead
For a while I was doing freelance historical research for period authors who couldn't be bothered to get their facts straight and just wanted to focus on plot arc and character development. One really fun assignment was digging into Hatshepsut, who I am sure you must be familiar with, and the reason behind the ritual defacing of her name is an interesting debate in the archaeological community. One of those names that should probably be just as famous as Cleopatra if not more so.
That's so funny you mention her! Because of the discussion above, I've been thinking over doing a post on how to "read" Egyptian art, and I was thinking that she'd definitely be a section in that. I taught Egyptian history at a university (as a TA) and the professor of that class was strongly of the belief that the ritual defacing was not based on her femaleness but on her perception as a usurper. I saw a debate on FB about this recently in which a woman who is a staunch feminist was tearing apart someone who had posted a picture of one of her surviving statues and made a quip about her beard. She gave a rather one dimensional assessment of the whole thing. (To clarify, I also count myself as a feminist.) I was going to chime in about the complexities of the debate but decided not to... previous experiences on chiming in with a "well, actually..." on FB have taught me that those can have some rather nasty unintended consequences. Either way, I think it's fair to say that sexism has been present all throughout history, but one should approach with caution when automatically reading sexism as the prime motivation in every scenario, because you run the risk of inserting modern bias into ancient history.
Also, I very much agree that she should be as famous as Cleopatra. Her story may not be as mythologized and scandalous, but that's only because of the advantage of being of the Greco-Roman era and not of an era where we only recently re-learned how to read the source literature.