2953: Handmade is Bad: Kunst / künstliche Jan 21, 2025
Lots is going on now with artificial intelligence, and in German it is not known as ‘artificial’ but künstliche Intelligenz, a pretty close translation for modern purposes. Historically however, this would have meant more like “intelligent intelligence” or "knowledgeable intelligence”, coming from the word können meaning ‘to know’. Further, the word Kunst translates as ‘art’ (so ‘artist’ = Künstler/in) also from this root.
Notably, English has the same relationship with ‘art’ and ‘artificial’. The progression from “skillfully made”, “handmade”, or perhaps in German “discerningly made” to come to mean ‘mock; synthetic’ is a very old one that was already present in Middle English. Old English for ‘artificial’ was ‘cræftlic’ (essentially craft +ly) also gained a more negative connotation than its sense of “handmade” though not with the sense of mimicry.