In a message dated 12/18/13 12:19:01 PM, [email protected] writes:
> there was an > attempt by the participants to broaden the terms to be all inclusive > -rather than any attempt to narrow the term to the specifics of the > context > in which they were being addressed. Likewise I find this tendency among > students as well - in that they would prefer the most vague usage of a > term > - rather than gain clarity > Agreed: It's effectively the murder of a word when it becomes used far beyond its original borders -- 'obscene', 'awesome' (when I was young, I used to think of "awe" as the rarest of human feelings. The term 'holocaust' went both ways: hundreds of years ago, it meant something burned completely. But in the period after World War II, it became the term for the Nazi extermination plan against the Jews -- often with a capital H. I became accustomed to that usage. When, as the second half of the century wore on, and the term began to applied applied to any widespread destruction, I didn't like it. What the Nazis did with their industrialized extermination was unique, and I felt it should be branded with a unique name. The twentieth century expansion of the use of the term "the art of" has often seemed to me to be blurring together efforts that should be kept separate. But we also have to allow thinkers to discover when essentially the same factor underlies seemingly separate activities. "Creativity" is not a gift confined only to "the arts". There is a value -- albeit a somewhat fuzzy one -- in recognizing that it can play a part in producing progress in, say, science, math, and philosophy. And even in that seemingly anti-art area, business.
