Is the competition/cooperation between symbolic AI and statistical AI (ML) about historical approach to research / engineering, or is it more fundamentally about what intelligent agents "are"?

I have found that comprehensive overviews of artificial intelligence (Wikipedia, SEP article, Norvig and Russel's AI: A Modern Approach) make reference to symbolic AI and statistical AI in their historical context of the former preceding the latter, their corresponding limitations etc. But I have found it really difficult to dissect this from the question of whether the divide / cooperation between these paradigms are about the implementation of engineering of intelligent agents, or if they are getting at something more …

agents ai artificial competition engineering ml research statistical symbolic ai