Alex WellersteinVerified account

Given that artists and engineers both manipulate the world to make things, it is odd. But then the House of Art has many rooms, one of which - as you note, Alex - is music.

Totally agree, but to different ends, would you say? Do artists want to make beauty and engineers to make function, or is that too facile?

I think if you try to put artists in a box, they always cry, "don't put me in a box!" (I mean, I get that. Even if it's a really nice box.) So I try not to generalize about what they "want." (They want... EVERYTHING.)

But I do think that there are intersections of intentionality and aesthetics that help characterize that nebulous thing we call "design," and that this is often very understandable to engineers, whereas "art" can feel more disconnected from intent.

I think engineering students get intentionality (I made X to evoke Y feeling or encourage Z behavior) and control, so if you show them that something humanistic gives them that, they are usually happy to learn about it. This is how I sell them on improving their writing skills.

I'd expect there's also the fairly simple interpretation, which is that "art" is a word with multiple definitions or connotations, and that the most common is probably "that which is found in an art gallery/museum" rather than, say, "the entire creative enterprise".

Yes, but that is also what's so disappointing. Maybe it's just me, but it does seem that I encounter "arts" students who are dismissive of science/engineering much more infrequently than science/engineering students who are dismissive of "the arts".