The arts and sciences share the same goal: to understand and represent the world, whether internal or external. Yet their approaches differ: the sciences seek a universal vision, while the arts express a personal vision recognized by an audience. Their relationships change with time and context. Since prehistoric times, music, painting and sculpture have accompanied the technical progress of hunter-gatherers. With agriculture and animal husbandry, architecture became associated with geometry and mechanics, and decoration with the physics of solids. These reciprocal influences show that the two fields feed off each other. The study adopts a "global history" perspective to trace this evolution: from its origins to the present day, with particular reference to paving stones, forms of art and science, present even in "Street Art". It also highlights the links between painting and optics, music, acoustics and sociology since the great discoveries.