> Chris, engineers ARE artists. They are artists who love great precision in
> their work. They design their machines and structures according to their
> own aesthetic parameters, to fulfill certain functions.
Although there is much truth in the above, this unification is not helpful.
For the engineer, the aesthetic of fulfilling those certain functions is
very secondary to the fulfillment of the functions themselves, so much so
that the aesthetic is often totally submerged. Yes, we often search for
(say) an "elegant" solution, but to a large extent this is just a heuristic
that we use because seeking elegance has yielded well-performing products
in the past. To call engineering "art" just results in confusion; it's
much more accurate to step back from unifying all of existence under "art"
and instead merely observe that engineers do employ quite a few techniques
that are not within the scope of the scientific method, and that some of
those could quite validly be discussed under the banner of "art". That is
a more analytic and helpful view, and much less confusing.
Rich.
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