艺术，科学和技术（工程）
wanghx
立里:
In fact, there is art in science, and science
in art. This is why many science books are titled "The art of ...".
And it's widely believed that the proof of Geometric problems are more of
an art than a science approach. This is why many scientists tried to find
the universal method or law defining the approach to proof of Geometric
laws, but failed. Prof. Zhang said, "The history of science is the
history of human trying to turn problems of art into problems of science,
and further problems of engineering." This idea is a very keen insight.
And later I read many books in which similar ideas are expressed.
A problem of art, by its definition, is that different person will have
different ways to do it, and have different answers. There is no law
to define that one way is correct and good, while the other way is wrong
and bad. The answer to the problem, or the production the artists work
out, is completely dependant on the individuals who did it. The task
of artists is to explore the seemingly unlimited ways to do one thing. :)
A problem of science, by its definition, is that any person will get to
the same conclusion, despite what kind of approach he used. There is
clear and definite laws to define what is true, and what is false.
The answer to the problem, or the production the scientists work out,
should never be dependant on the individuals who did it, otherwise, one
of them must be wrong. The task of scientists is to find out the laws
that controls behind the phenomena, and prove it by clearly pre-defined
procedures and up-to-now known laws.
A problem of engineering, by its definition, is that any person will
get the same result, provided that he followed the law of science
and clearly pre-defined approach of examination and production. If he
repeats the approach 1000 times, he should get 1000 identical (to certain
precision extent) copies. The answer to the problem, or the production
the engineers work out, should never be dependant on the individuals who
did it following the recipe, otherwise, the recipe is wrong. The task
of engineers is to find out the exact recipes that can be followed
strictly by any person with adequate equipment, with and only with the
knowledge of how to follow the recipes, to re-produce what the recipes
said to be got, and preferrably in a mass batch. Engineering, in fact,
is the final target of science.
If you read some books on history of the major sources of human culture,
such as Greece, Babylon, Egypt, India and China, you can easily find
out how science emerged and departed from art. A problem is called an
art, most likely only because human hasn't accumulated enough knowledge
of its nature and operation laws. As human get more and more insight
into it, laws of it are explored and it turns to be science. And as
human get more precise control over the repeating process, it turns
to be engineering. :)) And people continues to find new problems of
art in the process of exploration in art, science and engineering, so
the problem forks, or probes deeper, and thus the whole knowledge body
develops in a recursive manner. A good example is portrait painting
(art), human body sketch anatomy and theory of perspective (science),
and photography (engineering), and later in photography, new art problems
emerged, such as "dark cabinet processing arts". And as people get fully
control of the re-production quality of photographs, this art was changed
into science and engineering and now massly produced by machines. :)
And now with digital image processing techniques, almost all "dark
cabinet processing arts" can be precisely simulated by the computer!
So everybody with sufficient computer software knowledge can do even
better than what earlier artists had done. :)