Is Science Merely Applied Engineering?

What is Engineering?
The scientist merely explores that which exists, while the engineer creates what has never existed before . Theodore von Kármán
A demarcation problem.
What is difference between and relation of science & engineering?
Theodore von Kármán (1881-1963)

Is Engineering Applied Science?
Commonly held: Engineering is merely applied science.
One critique: Vincenti, What Engineer’s Know & How They Know It.
A history lesson from Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration.
www.sirbacon.org
Bacon considered by many the father of modern science.

London We’ve Got a Problem
That the state of knowledge is not prosperous…and that a way must be opened for the human understanding entirely different from any hitherto known… in order that the mind may exercise over the nature of things the authority which properly belongs to it.
Francis Bacon 1561-1626

The Problem: Stuck on Aristotle
Bacon on the problem with science:
… all the tradition and succession of schools is still a succession of masters and scholars, not of inventors and those who bring to further perfection the things invented .

More Bacon: Invent Knowledge
In the mechanical arts we do not find it so: they, on the contrary, as having in them some breath of life, are continually growing and becoming more perfect. As originally invented they are commonly rude, clumsy, and shapeless; afterwards they acquire new powers and more commodious arrangements and constructions;… Philosophy and the intellectual sciences, on the contrary, stand like statues.

Oops! Science from Engineering
We’ve got it backwards.
Father of science, Bacon, insists that science must learn from mechanical arts.
Engineering is not merely applied science .
More accurate & equally haughty: Science is merely engineering applied to the invention of concepts.
If scientist puts engineering down, give a little history lesson.

Is Science Merely Applied Engineering?

by iFoundry on Sep 10, 2008

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Is Science Merely Applied Engineering? — Presentation Transcript