ABSTRACT
Reflections on what we today observe as art has a history of three millenniums. To observe art as a system in society only makes sense in modernity, as the differentiation of functional systems starts as societal changes in the 18th century. From early modernity, art and sciences of art were closely related. Often the playwrights would develop their own (normative) theories. From these first attempts to understand how art functions in modernity, there has been a significant differentiation of “art” and “science” as functionally separated systems. Evolution has led us to the present situation, where “art sciences” observe an “art system” and vice versa. This sociological fact has implications for any attempt to observe the present function of art. Art does not need science in order to evolve. Science on the other hand cannot create art, and a science of art without works of art would make little sense. Still the two systems need each other in their difference from each other. This need is not a pious aspiration but a basic framework condition, reflected in our concept of the two dramaturgies respectively inside art system as poietics and inside science system as a poetology. It is not to say, that art has not been under scrutiny before. The questions of what happens when man-made artefacts refer to an imagined reality has been raised since Antiquity. Why are we so preoccupied by the phenomenon? Many attempts have been made to identify the intriguing qualities in man-made artefacts in comparison with nature, society, or other artefacts.
