Why Not Such Huge Veneration Of Art?

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The Creative Process could be more vital to mankind's mental state than science even though it is important, too.

Mind, body, spirit.. all is important, none more than the other. Each without the other two is not a life.

I dare say that, if it were not for the thousands of devoted science fiction authors, the naysayers to scientific progress would have had science outlawed long ago. The Scopes Monkey Trial would have succeeded in silencing honest scientists instead of backfiring...the march of fundamentalism and reactionary politics would have gone unchallenged, and we would today be little better than those Islamic nations that today live at the edge of savagery.

The arts are necessary for making anything at all happen, for better or for worse.

I will agree that the arts are appallingly undervalued. As to the suggestion that they are more vital to humanity than science, hmm not so sure about that. Your premise sounds so typical of people who postulate without actually doing research, and as such they see actual evidence based knowledge as a pain in the arse as it puts up valid arguments against what they see as "common sense"

This got me thinking as to when, and how, the distinction between "art" and "science" developed. Given that it appears to have been quite recent in human history.

Around the 1700th and 18th centuries with the advent of the scientific method and the demise of scholasticism. At this point our understanding moved forward at a rapid rate after over a millenia of inertia due to aristotelian methods of discovery. The Arabs had been onto this centuries earlier but unfortunately things went a tad pear shaped (many historians blame the sacking of Baghdad and other Mongol acts for this). A lot more to it but this is essentially what happened.

Societies of the past have been remembered as much -if not more - for their arts as for their science. I hope that when archaeologists dig up remnants of the late, great American civilization someday in the far future, they'll be just as impressed by what came out of our hearts as much as of what came from our heads.

The arts are "appallingly undervalued" because they are in a rut. Everything is either derivative of something else, or a vain attempt to produce "art" by smashing pieces of junk together, putting a frame around it, and slapping an emo label on the entire mess.

That's not the point. It's not about the money. It's about the personal experience the individual has as creator.

Who said anything about money? I'm referring to the intrinsic social value of what passes for "art" these days. It all seems to have dropped to the level of rambling emo free-verse - an expression of nothing particularly significant to anyone but the "artist".

The significance to the artist is the greatest quality. For significance to the general populous, we have the evening news.

It is, and I hope they get out of the rut soon. I'm sick of the same formula shows on TV.

I think both are important...admittedly I guess I lean towards arts, I mean music is one of my main obsessions...I know I watch a lot of movies and I've found like artistic photography or paintings/drawings ect. to be facinating point is I suppose I spend more time on that kind of thing than reading about the latest scientific research and what not, but the scientific aspect of things also interests me so I do try to keep myself fairly updated on current scientific knowledge...but I take theories with a grain of salt as sometimes they prove false or not entirely accurate, or don't quite explain the thing they are offered as an explanation for.

It actually did kind of backfire. The purpose of the Scopes trial was to provide a test case that could be used to overturn the law against teaching evolution. Scopes agreed in advance to be tried even though there is no evidence that he ever actually taught evolution. The backfire was not that he was found guilty, but that the appeals court found against the defendant and the law stayed in place.

There are many things in modern "art" that does not impress me at all.

I've heard plenty of recent music I would not categorize as 'emo free-verse', of course most of what reaches the radio...well eww. But of course that is just music not all art.