Art or Science

Forgive me for being nosey, but I had an idea that Britain as it post deindustrialises will not need to know science anymore and therefore the population will become artists of one form or another, even if that means piss artist.

I just came from a little talk by a Chinese professor of industry who was saying "THE REAL THING IS: learning by doing". All professors have their line and this was what he was making a deal about. I naturally warmed to this notion as this is how I tend to learn, but his point was China is getting smart because it does a lot of the doing part (manufacturing). He said universities have their role, but most of the knowledge comes from the doing bit.

And so for this reason I ask the above question rather than the far more mundane question of what course did you study. It's trying to pick your brain as to what you consider is mostly in it from the entirety of your life. What do you know which can be described as academic knowledge that you feel at least comfortable enough to do a public talk on, e.g. supposing it is to the students of your local uni where you got to  make sure you know what you are talking about! Forget any consideration of what they might want to learn about, just suppose you have an audience that whatever you say, they would have some education on it themselves.

I mean this is important for the country, because what we want to see is who knows what so we can direct our attention to building an economy on those things. We need that to survive. I just use the BA/BSc here so one can exactly delineate any subject into one of two distinct categories so we all call a  spade a spade.