On the unity of arts, crafts, and sciences: Reflections of an economist and violmaker

Abstract

Introduction The present essay deals with the basic unity of all creative activities: arts, crafts, and sciences. The background was my double occupation as a maker of models in mathematical economics and a maker of baroque viols.(1) The intriguing question asked me was: "Is not the making of scientific models an art and craft like the making of musical instruments?"(2) This question was so surprising and at the same time so challenging that I simply had to do something about :_t. The real difficulty, of course, was to avoid the trivially obvieus and the purely coincidental. To illustrate the second point, i did profit from reading on vibrating plates and shells i~ Lord Rayleigh's classical Theory of Sound, both with resoezt to modelling business cycles in space and time, and with r.~spect to shaping viol plates, but things like this are mere co;xciaence. Finally, I thought there were a few things of a more general interest to say, concerning the unity of intellectual activities, and concerning the parallels of development in science on one hand and technology (to which the instruments of music belong) on the other.