Is engineering merely applied science?

by MulaiAzhagi Sun Aug 05, 2012 9:06 am

“It is sometimes said that engineering is merely applied science,” said Petroski, the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. “That is at best a gross oversimplification. … Wherever there are scientific principles or scientific facts that engineers can use, they do so. But they do not let the absence of scientific knowledge keep them from making new technology. In fact, there have been instances where scientists insisted that something was impossible, only to have engineers rise to the occasion and disprove the scientists.”

http://magazine.mst.edu/2011/09/engineering_links_science_and.html

There is some extra-scientific component to engineering, something often referred to as the creative or artistic component. The engineer designing a bridge does not deduce its form from scientific laws and mathematical equations. Rather, like a poem or a painting, the bridge is formed first in the engineer’s mind’s eye. It is only then that the hypothesized structure can be given a scientific or mathematical litmus test. In engineering, analysis follows synthesis--not the other way around.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Engineer-Science-Problems/dp/0307272451

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:42 am

Science is about finding out what we have and engineering is about inventing things that we don't have.

- Von Karman

The most convincing definition I have come across

Is engineering merely applied science?

Is engineering merely applied science?

Re: Is engineering merely applied science?