After historical behave of the society facing art or scientific advances, it can not be stated that science has a reassuring function while art upsets. Actually, if we might assume there's a given function for art or science, this function has shown to be morphing through time in both fields.
By starting with the art, and in inverse chronological order: the power of the art to be upsetting is almost completely lost. If not for the staff working at the Tate gallery -as an instance-, a bunch of runners sprinting through the corridors of the museum is only remotely upsetting. Maybe so remotely that you have to look at the prices of such performances for them to be upset. Perhaps at Duchamp's time it was in there the value of the art, but nowadays we should search this value somewhere else or admit art hasn't got any value at all.
Neither historically is the stated point of view valid. Back to the XX's century avant-gardes, the value was found in the ability of seeing the world with new, eye-opening techniques which didn't necessarily present a direct attack to stated topics. As an instance, we can find a great number of religious work, not provocative at all, or purposeless paints or writings consisting only of experiments with forms, colors or rhythms.
Seeing further back into the past, the value of the art came to reside only in the ability of an artist to flatter high society members paying to get the works done. Though many revolutionary valuable oeuvres did actually upset and found through this its value to survive the pass of time, we can't dismiss the fact that truly great advance were made within the safe and comfortable aristocratic world such as the realistic pictures of well stated families, which lead to the develop of the dark chamber techniques; or the paintings of landscapes which brake with the realistic tradition.
Eventually, coming to the origins of art, we find the value of it in the magical notions attached to the symbols printed at jars or in jewels or inside paleolithic caves.
In researching about the value of the science as a reassuring mean, we find that historically science attacked -if not completely removed- the stated beliefs and faiths. As the better instance of such point, the history gifted us with the most influencing intellectual of the history: the biologist Charles Darwin, who even today is found to have a non pretended provocative attitude against the faiths and worships of certain groups. By means of his work "the origin of the species", Darwin directly attacked the deepest beliefs of his contemporaries and created a profound debate which only eventually and after a long time became to be seen as reassuring.
I think, Charles Darwin example shows up that the real value of science has been reassuring only in the scientific ambit, which accepted the results of the theories and experiments and further developed them. But in general, in the society, the real value came only through the removal of deep established topics which lead to a loss of reassured issues.
