In this quote, the “worst state of affairs” is when science starts to focus on art. This means that instead of doing scientific experiments, people will start to care more about art and beauty than logic and facts. Some people may think that this could cause problems as science is meant to be based on facts and logic, while art is based on opinion and usually does not need any scientific research to be created. By combining science and art, people may think that science loses its accuracy and it can be difficult to identify what is true and what is not.