"In fact 'engineering' now often signifies a new system of thought, a fresh method of attack upon the world’s problems the antithesis of traditionalism, with its precedents and dogmas. (Alfred D Flinn, "Leadership in Economic Progress", Civil Engineering Vol. 2 (4), 1932)
"There may be said to be two kinds of engineering, that which is essentially creative, and that which is practiced in pursuit of known methods." (William L Emmet, "The Autobiography of an Engineer", 1940)
"Science acquires knowledge but has no interest in its practical applications. The applications are the work of engineers." (Edwin P Hubble, "The Nature of Science and Other Lectures", 1954)
"Doing engineering is practicing the art of the organized forcing of technological change." (George Spencer-Brown, Electronics, Vol. 32 (47), 1959)
"Science aims at the discovery, verification, and organization of fact and information [...] engineering is fundamentally committed to the translation of scientific facts and information to concrete machines, structures, materials, processes, and the like that can be used by men." (Eric A Walker, "Engineers and/or Scientists", Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 51, 1961)
"What, then, is science according to common opinion? Science is what scientists do. Science is knowledge, a body of information about the external world. Science is the ability to predict. Science is power, it is engineering. Science explains, or gives causes and reasons." (John Bremer "What Is Science?" [in "Notes on the Nature of Science"], 1962)
"Engineering is the art of skillful approximation; the practice of gamesmanship in the highest form. In the end it is a method broad enough to tame the unknown, a means of combing disciplined judgment with intuition, courage with responsibility, and scientific competence within the practical aspects of time, of cost, and of talent. This is the exciting view of modern-day engineering that a vigorous profession can insist be the theme for education and training of its youth. It is an outlook that generates its strength and its grandeur not in the discovery of facts but in their application; not in receiving, but in giving. It is an outlook that requires many tools of science and the ability to manipulate them intelligently In the end, it is a welding of theory and practice to build an early, strong, and useful result. Except as a valuable discipline of the mind, a formal education in technology is sterile until it is applied." (Ronald B Smith, "Professional Responsibility of Engineering", Mechanical Engineering Vol. 86 (1), 1964)
"Engineering is a method and a philosophy for coping with that which is uncertain at the earliest possible moment and to the ultimate service to mankind. It is not a science struggling for a place in the sun. Engineering is extrapolation from existing knowledge rather than interpolation between known points. Because engineering is science in action - the practice of decision making at the earliest moment - it has been defined as the art of skillful approximation. No situation in engineering is simple enough to be solved precisely, and none worth evaluating is solved exactly. Never are there sufficient facts, sufficient time, or sufficient money for an exact solution, for if by chance there were, the answer would be of academic and not economic interest to society. These are the circumstances that make engineering so vital and so creative." (Ronald B Smith, "Engineering Is…", Mechanical Engineering Vol. 86 (5), 1964)
"Engineering is knowledge work. That is, although the goal of engineering may be to produce useful objects, engineers do not construct such object themselves. Rather they aim to generate knowledge that will allow such objects to be built." Dorothy A Winsor, "Writing Like an Engineer: A Rhetorical Education", 1966)
"Engineering is a profession, an art of action and synthesis and not simply a body of knowledge. Its highest calling is to invent and innovate." (Daniel V DeSimone & Hardy Cross, "Education for Innovation", 1968)
"Technological invention and innovation are the business of engineering. They are embodied in engineering change." (Daniel V DeSimone & Hardy Cross, "Education for Innovation", 1968)
"[...] it is rather more difficult to recapture directness and simplicity than to advance in the direction of ever more sophistication and complexity. Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again." (Ernst F Schumacher, "Small Is Beautiful", 1973)
"Engineering is superficial only to those who view it superficially. At the heart of engineering lies existential joy." (Samuel C Florman, "The Existential Pleasures of Engineering", 1976)
"From the point of view of modern science, design is nothing, but from the point of view of engineering, design is everything. It represents the purposive adaptation of means to reach a preconceived end, the very essence of engineering." (Edwin T Layton Jr., "American Ideologies of Science and Engineering", Technology and Culture No. 4, 1976)
"Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed." (David Billington, "The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering", 1983)
"As engineering becomes increasingly central to the shaping of society, it is ever more important that engineers become introspective. Rather than merely revel in our technical successes, we should intensify our efforts to explore, define, and improve the philosophical foundations of our professions." (Samuel C Florman, "The Civilized Engineer", 1985)
"[...] without imagination, heightened awareness, moral sense, and some reference to the general culture, the engineering experience becomes less meaningful, less fulfilling than it should be." (Samuel C Florman, "The Civilized Engineer", 1985)
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world." (Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988)
"Engineering knowledge reflects the fact that design does not take place for its own sake and in isolation." (Walter G Vincenti, "What Engineers Know and How They Know It", 1990)
"All of engineering involves some creativity to cover the parts not known, and almost all of science includes some practical engineering to translate the abstractions into practice." (Richard W Hamming, "The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers", 1991)
"In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state." (Richard W Hamming, "The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers", 1991)
"No matter how vigorously a 'science' of design may be pushed, the successful design of real things in a contingent world will always be based more on art than on science. Unquantifiable judgments and choices are the elements that determine the way a design comes together. Engineering design is simply that kind of process. It always has been; it always will be." (Eugene S Ferguson , "Engineering and the Mind’s Eye", 1992)
"Visual thinking is necessary in engineering. A major portion of engineering information is recorded and transmitted in a visual language that is in effect the lingua franca of engineers in the modern world. It is the language that permits ‘readers’ of technologically explicit and detailed drawings to visualise the forms, the proportions, and the interrelationships of the elements that make up the object depicted. It is the language in which designers explain to makers what they want them to construct." (Eugene S Ferguson, "Engineering and the Mind’s Eye", 1992)
"Good engineering is not a matter of creativity or centering or grounding or inspiration or lateral thinking, as useful as those might be, but of decoding the clever, even witty, messages the solution space carves on the corpses of the ideas in which you believed with all your heart, and then building the road to the next message." (Fred Hapgood, "Up the infinite Corridor: MIT and the Technical Imagination", 1993)
"Engineering is, of course, all about bridging the gulf between art and science. Engineering is often defined as the application of scientific principles to serve human needs. But it also brings creativity to bear on those scientific principles, dragging them out of pristine abstraction into the compromised universe of our frustrations and wants." (Scott Rosenberg, "Dreaming in Code", 2007)
"Over-engineering is a real disease of many engineers as they delight in design purity and ignore tradeoffs." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)
"A boat without a captain is nothing more than a floating waiting room: unless someone grabs the rudder and starts the engine, it’s just going to drift along aimlessly with the current. A piece of software is just like that boat: if no one pilots it, you’re left with a group of engineers burning up valuable time, just sitting around waiting for something to happen (or worse, still writing code that you don’t need)." (Titus Winters, "Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time", 2020)
"Engineers love to solve problems and build systems. Most engineers would gladly build a system to solve just about any problem. It is the engineering manager’s job to make sure that the team is using its time wisely and building the right system." (Morgan Evans, "Engineering Manager's Handbook", 2023)
"Engineering is an art of simplification, and the rules - when and how to simplify - are a matter of experience and intuition." (Olle I Elgerd)
"Engineering is the art or science of utilizing, directing or instructing others in the utilization of the principles, forces, properties and substances of nature in the production, manufacture, construction, operation and use of things [...] or of means, methods, machines, devices and structures [...]" (Alfred W Kiddle)
"Engineering is the conscious application of science to the problems of economic production." (Halbert P Gillette)
"Engineering is the professional and systematic application of science to the efficient utilization of natural resources to produce wealth." (T. J. Hoover & J. C. L. Fish)
"Indeed, the most important part of engineering work - and also of other scientific work - is the determination of the method of attacking the problem, whatever it may be." (Charles P Steinmetz)
"The essence of engineering consists not so much in the mere construction of the spectacular layouts or developments, but in the invention required - the analysis of the problem, the design, the solution by the mind which directs it all." (William Hood)
More quotes on" Engineering" at the-web-of-knowledge.blogspot.com.
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