In 1956
C.P. Snow published a
very influential essay called ``
The Two Cultures'' about the continuing differences between the
humanities and the
sciences, the fact that the split was more than a
hundred years old (it had in fact it's roots in the
renaissance) but only recently had education become sufficiently narrow for ``
educated'' people to have been exposed to only one culture.
One of the key differences between the two cultures is that the humanities values physical objects for the craft and skill that went into their creation, whereas the sciences value physical objects solely for their functionality.
It seems to be that some of the core problems facing industry today are the result of its attempting to be in both cultures. The music industry (a label which places it in the sciences) promotes `artists' (a label which places it in the humanities). There's a tension here between the process of creation and the object being created.
… and the result is the Milli Vanilli fiasco.
source:
all mistakes in this node are of my own creation