> Composing music is the ultimate way to express yourself.
I think a painter might disagree. As a composer myself, I will disagree as "expressing myself" was never what I wanted to do -- and was never taught to do by my teachers. Art as expression is an old idea that qualifies as one of these "simple solutions" -- easy, simple and wrong!
I've been coding professionally for 20 years now and find amazing similiarities between coding and writing music -- limited resources: number of musicians / RAM -- instrument limitations / instruction sets -- time limits / can't have every feature.... etc.
Both elegant code and elegant music are great examples of Herbert Simon's "satisficing" -- not perfect, but given the constraints of time / space / money / tools --- good enough!
re Creativity -- this has nothing to do with the arts, or rather, has no more to do with the arts than it does in any other aspect of life. A solution to a scheduling problem can be just as creative as a string quartet -- it just is often not given ("rewarded") with the honorific "art".
Too often, "art" (category) is confused with "art" (value judgement).
>I would hate to think there is any way to express yourself in a mathematical proof...
I hope you are not saying that Godel should have hated himself for expressing in an elegant mathematical proof something that he had discovered about the world of logic systems.
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> Composing music is the ultimate way to express yourself.
.... etc.
I think a painter might disagree. As a composer myself, I will disagree as "expressing myself" was never what I wanted to do -- and was never taught to do by my teachers. Art as expression is an old idea that qualifies as one of these "simple solutions" -- easy, simple and wrong!
I've been coding professionally for 20 years now and find amazing similiarities between coding and writing music -- limited resources: number of musicians / RAM -- instrument limitations / instruction sets -- time limits / can't have every feature
Both elegant code and elegant music are great examples of Herbert Simon's "satisficing" -- not perfect, but given the constraints of time / space / money / tools --- good enough!
re Creativity -- this has nothing to do with the arts, or rather, has no more to do with the arts than it does in any other aspect of life. A solution to a scheduling problem can be just as creative as a string quartet -- it just is often not given ("rewarded") with the honorific "art".
Too often, "art" (category) is confused with "art" (value judgement).
>I would hate to think there is any way to express yourself in a mathematical proof...
I hope you are not saying that Godel should have hated himself for expressing in an elegant mathematical proof something that he had discovered about the world of logic systems.