Alleycat said: >> Does it matter if a painter does or doesn't stretch and gesso his own canvas? Does it make him less of an artist if he doesn't mix his own pigments, or make his own brushes? Whether we build the geometries or create the textures has no bearing on what we make with them. << Exactly. The underlying point is critical: Division of labor is the source of progress, in art, science, or business. If we operate under the assumption that our products are only valid if we build everything from scratch, we simply won't get anywhere. We would be stuck in the Stone Age, as happens in countries where organized business is culturally or politically stifled. I find myself thinking here about the recent foofaraw over plagiarism by popular historians, which led to a sort of blackball against Ambrose and Goodwin. In that field precise credits matter above all... but this just acknowledges, without quite saying it openly, that historians don't create anything new. Writers who do create new thoughts, and artists who create new scenes and emotions, don't need to worry so much about precise placement of the quotation marks and footnotes!

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