long is the arm, short is life

"The word 'technology' comes from the Greek techne, often
translated as 'art', but closer in meaning to 'skill'. The first
translation is particularly misleading because techne included
both what we call 'art' and what we call 'technology', which,
since the modern emergence of the aesthetic and the 'fine arts',
have become so separated as almost to be opposite. Techne was
was originally related to words having to do with building, like
the buliding of walls. The Latin ars, from which our 'art' more
immediately descends, is related to 'arm', perhaps associating
skill especially with the making of weapons ('firearms', 'armour')
and tools, but also with the shoulder (armus), the arm of the body,
and more specifically, the skillful or 'dextrous' arm (and hand),
activity as it were using the stronger right hand, or perhaps most
generally activity increasing the power to act effectively. When it
began its historical life, then, 'art' had meanings rather like that
preserved in the kinship of the word 'craft' and the German Kraft,
'power' (even though 'crafts are for us now 'minor arts', another
casualty of the historical emergence of 'fine arts'). In antiquity,
the terms now translated by the word 'art' referred to useful adult
human pursuits running the full range from perfumery and
beekeeping to geometry and astronomy. The arts were regarded
as teachable and cumulative, skills to which some practitioners
made new contributions as the generations passed. Teachability
implied codification and principles, and those arts with theoretical
principles came to be regarded as higher than those without them,
so that, to keep our examples, geometry was higher than beekeeping,
even though it was necessary to be taught to be a beekeeper, and even
though it was possible to be a good beekeeper or a poor one..."

(From Real Spaces, by David Summers, a massive volume of
world art history. Found this passage after seeing the Elgin marbles
again last week, after not having seen them in a while... "if you can
hold a chisel, come to Athens!")