The idea that art and science are at opposite ends of a spectrum of human endeavor is a relatively recent one. Throughout most of human history, and still today in many cultures, art has been far more deeply embedded in day to day activity and world view. In recent centuries, and only in advanced industrial societies, has art come to be synonymous with the fine arts—a boundary which has become a wall. It may help us to see the large areas of commonality between art and science if we remind ourselves that what we now call art was techne—a term which distinguished the human-made from the naturally occurring— to the ancient Greeks, and that this sense of art lasted even into the twentieth century in the US in expressions such as useful arts, which referred to fields such as engineering.

Read more at http://seadnetwork.wordpress.com/white-paper-abstracts/final-white-papers/thinking-with-things-feeling-your-way-into-stem/