PSI - Issue 26

Jesús Toribio et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 26 (2020) 376–382

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Toribio / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

Fig. 9. Works by Michelangelo: Pietà di Firenze and Pietà Rondanini .

Fig. 10. Works by Donatello: Penitent Magdalene and Saint John the Baptist .

7. Closing remarks An innovative and unconventional approach to the relationship between art and fracture mechanics is offered on the basis of previous research of the author in the field of fracture and structural integrity of cold drawn pearlitic steel and in the conceptual framework of his thoughts and reflections about the philosophy of arts and humanities and its relation with science. The link between philosophy and fracture mechanics may be established on the basis of an Orteguian approach and the concept of circumstance . Paraphrasing the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, it is possible to say that “the material is itself and its circumstance” to indicate that a material does not have a behavior per se , but it depends on the circumstance. The relation between poetry and fracture mechanics is raised through the idea of crack paths: Antonio Machado (“se hace camino al andar”) and Fray Luis de León (“y entrambas a porfía mezclan una dulcísima armonía”). With regard to environmental effects on fracture, one recalls the words of Machado (“hoy es siempre todavía”) and Thomas S. Eliot (“and all is always now”). Cinema (movies) and fracture mechanics are connected in this paper through some fracture profiles of notched specimens of cold drawn pearlitic steels that resemble the beautiful landscape of Monument Valley in the USA; it