There used to be a distinction that signaled the difference between study for the sake of acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary for some specific line of work or trade and a higher form of study that was undertaken because it was thought worthy in itself. I am speaking, of course, of the traditional division between the servile and the liberal arts. For example, Aquinas, in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, calls liberal or free those arts which are concerned with knowledge for its own sake, and servile those arts which are concerned with utility, where the knowledge sought is for the sake of some already pre-determined, practical end.
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