intellectualism?

Question

why is it that intellectualism is so often associated with the arts? music, art, and literature to be more specific. what about science and math, logic, things that actually exist? since when do you have to be a communist hippy or a stuck-up museum geek to be an intellectual?

Answer 1

I feel that being an intellectual is solely defined by being able to process thoughts and come to conclusions on your own, not just rehashing what you've read or been told. Knowing and learning things is great, but using that to form completely independent ideas and opinions is a totally different thing.

It's not what you know, it's how you use it.

Answer 2

The difference is simple - An intellectual is a highly educated person whose interests are studying and other activities that involve careful thinking and mental effort: Subjects like the arts require a background of study that is different areas, and the analysis of concepts, emotional qualities as well as concrete facts.

Mathematicians are simply using a language to describe the world in a simple way. However, when maths is applied in an imaginative way, then that mathematician is being intellectual.

You don't have to be alternative, Left wing or into antiquities, to be an intellectual, but you find that most are. It is only the ones who are unable to understand our thoughts that brandish such remarks. As I said, the difference between intellectuals and the rest of a society is simple - simple minds, unwilling to do the study or unable to comprehend outside their own narrow spheres of interaction.

By the way, I am left wing, Green, and have worked in Museum restoration for the last 16 years, and oh yes, some consider me an intellectual. But I am also dyslexic, paint frescos, and enjoy real ales.

Answer 3

Intellectualism is not something you bring out when you're taking a bathroom break, or when you wake up with smelly breath, or when you're working at the factory trying to assemble some sockets into place.

Neither is art.

So the perception is that intellectualism is associated to the arts BECAUSE it is, in part.

And since Math and Science are recognized as something Math Teachers (not even mathematicians, which is what they really are) and Doctors (because they had to study science, right?) do.....they stand on their own.

So you have Art, Math, Science. And art involves intellectualism, Math involves skinny guys in front of a drawing board, and Science involves white....ahem...nearly everything white.

Answer 4

Its not directly.

Its just that arts were in the past something that only the wealthy could afford to spend time studying, and if they were wealthy, they likely had a better grooming. The upper class had a belief as such that they were more intellectual, and saturated society with this view.

Answer 5

So all artists, poets, photographers, fashion designers, authors and musicians are communist hippies and/or geeks? THAT is why you're not an intellectual - stupid generalisations like that. I think Einstein and Stephen Hawking are viewed as intellectuals, and they're scientists.

Answer 6

People in the sciences and mathematics, et al, tend to be the most intelligent, in terms of IQ. And many, many people in the arts are not terribly bright (I've always maintained that artistic ability is not a form of intelligence, but simply another skill/talent/approach entirely). So in that sense, I see where you're coming from.
But people in the sciences and maths tend to be boring and anal.
Analytical personalities are no fun to be around.
Give me someone passionate, inspired, imperfect, and artistic any day over someone who feels the need to analyze, measure, and calculate everything.

Answer 7

well i think that science and math are important too, but it doesn't necessarily make you smart because all you have to do is learn it from a textbook or something. the arts take time to learn- no one can ever master it, but if you get pretty close you are recognized.

But I really don't get it either. My impression of smart people are people who do know math, science, etc.