From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2002-05-12T12:45:28+09:00
Subject: Re: OT:is software eng an art?

In article <20020511223052.GD580@negwo.eastcore.net>,
Rick Bradley  <rick@rickbradley.com> wrote:
>
>Neither art nor science is truly objective nor subjective.  Both derive
>their value from the application of politics -- art and science apart
>from interpretation and social impact are empty.  Art and science are
>much closer than either side would care to admit.
>

very post-modern.... while modernity maintained a lot of 'either-or' 
propostions, post-modern thought leaves room for the 'both-and' and is 
wholistic rather than the reductionism of modernism...

Modernity maintained that Science was completely objective and would 
always arrive at correct, final answers.  Now that much of the cultures of 
the world have largely made the transistion to something after modernity 
(most often called post-modernity till we come up with a better name :) 
many of us no longer hold these kinds of beliefs about Science.  On the 
postmodern side of the divide we tend to view Science as a human endeavor 
and just like all human endeavors it's prone to error.

So statements like:
"The mistaken notion that software is art and therefore lacks discipline" 
reflect the modernist tendency toward reductionism and tends to rub many 
of us the wrong way because we've moved a bit further toward the 
post-modern side of the epochal shift.


Phil