Science vs. Engineering

In a lecture a while back, there was a slide about a post from a Female Science Professor and her response to Henry Petroski’s article on science against engineering. The engineer’s argued that science, although important, offered little progress for society while most breakthroughs came through engineers such as flying planes or transatlantic steamships. The scientists, on the other hand, said that engineering is a “plug-and-chug” field, taking assumptions from the past and continuously reapplying them while scientists deal with the unknown. I feel that both sides of the argument offer a convoluted view and do not see the big picture. 

The thing is that engineering and science go hand in hand. You cannot say one is better than the other, because comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges while both have been equally important in advancing technology. In an example, work in the field of lasers has been done through work by scientists, while engineers have allowed for large breakthroughs in the field of electronics. Both have contributed greatly to human advancement.

Apples and oranges are different, yet both delicious, get what I mean?

YC Fung and P. Tong said in Foundations of Solid Mechanics something similar to what I am trying to argue: "Almost all engineers working on new designs find that they do not have all the needed information. Most often, they are limited by insufficient scientific knowledge. Thus they study mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and mechanics. Often they have to add to the sciences relevant to their profession. Thus engineering sciences are born." 

This guy might be portrayed as a mad scientist, but he is obviously practicing engineering while building his prototype, with important design decisions such as should the brain be in the robot or just be Bluetooth connected, or solving the engineering challenges of even keeping a brain alive.

So what about those “plug-and-chug” engineers? We’ll, looking at an article on Wikipedia about engineers, it seems that the word “engineer” has more than one meaning, one of which involves things like operating machinery or a technician instead of the engineer that professor Foster wants us to be. However, it would be unfair to say that they are not engineers in the same way it would be unfair to say a researcher is not a scientist. Both are necessary in their respective fields to keep society up-to-date and usable and allow it to progress. It would also be unfair to say that all engineers are just technicians or all scientists are just researchers.

So then what makes a great scientist or a great engineer? Looking at the past, great scientists are often also great engineers, such as Leonardo da Vinci, or Nicola Tesla. Their achievements could not have been made without extensive knowledge of science and engineering. However, knowledge of science and engineering is not the only important quality. Great scientists and engineers have a third trait; innovation. From Leonardo’s flying machines to Tesla’s wireless power, these great scientists/engineers were also great inventors, applying their knowledge of science to create something amazing while using engineering to bring their ideas to the physical world. Just like the mad scientist above, their creations were thought of as “crazy” because what they were making never existed. Pushing the boundaries of what can be done is what I think defines a great engineer/scientist, and I think that was what foster was trying to get at in that lecture.

The video above is hilarious, not because we are mostly guys (sorry Angela), but because the caveman used his creation in an innovative way that others would have never thought of.