Xref: utzoo comp.sw.components:153 sci.philosophy.tech:1394 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!ames!amdahl!pyramid!thirdi!metapsy!sarge From: sarge@metapsy.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) Newsgroups: comp.sw.components,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: Art -> Engineering -> Science Summary: Art, engineering, and science differ in purpose, not knowledge Keywords: art engineering science knowledge purpose Message-ID: <866@metapsy.UUCP> Date: 14 Sep 89 02:59:06 GMT References: <6103@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <6433@hubcap.clemson.edu> Reply-To: sarge@metapsy.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) Organization: Metapsychology, Woodside, CA Lines: 43 In article <6433@hubcap.clemson.edu> Bill Wolfe writes: >From article <6103@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, by ram@wb1.cs.cmu.edu (Rob MacLachlan): >There is a general progression which all fields go through: >Art form => Engineering discipline => Hard Science >The progress along this route is proportional to what is known >about the field. It seems to me, rather, that the three disciplines can better be distinguished by their purposes. Art is (I believe) principally concerned with the production and communication of subjective experience (feelings, thoughts, sensations, intimations, and the like). Engineering is primarily concerned with control over the physical universe. Science is concerned with discovery of the laws of nature. Any of these disciplines can be done with a greater or lesser amount of knowledge. Various forms of crafts (such as those we learned in Boy Scout camp) are primitive forms of engineering that require considerably less knowledge than designing a spacecraft. The fingerpainting we did in school is considerably less knowledgeable than the work of Rembrandt. A baby's attempt to find out about physical reality by alternately tasting, feeling, smelling, and seeing an object is a primitive form of science -- he too, is concerned with discovering the regularities in his environment. I don't think an expert in art is any less knowledgeable than his counterpart in engineering, or that an expert engineer is more ignorant than a top-level scientist. It is just that the subject matter is different and the purpose is different. Is one form of knowledge more "proper" than another? I don't see how one could say that. -- Sarge Gerbode -- UUCP: pyramid!thirdi!metapsy!sarge Institute for Research in Metapsychology 950 Guinda St. Palo Alto, CA 94301