goody2shoes

As a physicist, I spend half my life trying to convince engineers that they are absolutely clueless when it come comes to fundamental science. Engineers are good for making stuff and that's it.

Goody

liquid

Are you trying to get into a slanging match? Because I won't debase myself to the level of trolling that was...

What I will say is that you probably have severe misconceptions over the work, research, learning and jobs we do. This probably comes from three factors:

1) Some kind of snobbishness, which is quite amusing really since we earn a multiple of what you get paid!

2) A misconception over who actually is and engineer and who is not. I, of course, refer to chartered engineers. 'Engineers' or technicians as I prefer to call them, are to us as builders are to architects.

3) A rather narrow view of the scientific endeavour, equating whatever field you are in to be the only serious physical scientific frontier.

Of course, to refute you, I would have to have your opinion clarified and your reasons explained.

Oolon Colluphid

Ref "snobbishness", I guess that engineers, unlike (allegedly) biologists, do not suffer from physics envy.

Oolon

Beelzebub

From Liquid:1) Some kind of snobbishness, which is quite amusing really since we earn a multiple of what you get paid!

Your answer was the most amusing. This is not about money but intelligence and competence. After all, Michael Jackson makes multiples of what you make.

goody2shoes

Hi Liquid,


I have a BSEE and an MSEE from MIT and worked for 40 years as an engineer in an aerospace company. (Excellent Pay). I now own my own company and make more money than ever, doing Physics research and aerospace consulting.

I know exactly what a good engineer is versus a technician. An engineer is one who puts into practice the designing of devices based upon his understanding of physical laws.

My Ph.D. is in Physics (fusion plasmas to be specific). I say what I say because I have known many engineers -- some of whom have your attitude. Unless you have taken substantial courses in fundamental physics, then you are not qualified to make the statement that you did. Certainly you cannot legitimately make that statement for all engineers. Many engineers tend to be a snobby bunch who think they can do anything. Yours is not an unusual boast for an engineer. Engineers are just engineers; they are not entitled to claim expertise in other fields any more than a lawyer, therapist or what have you does.

I am not laying claim to anything that I am not in fact expert in. You might consider practicing the same.

The person you responded to was simply claiming that he knows a design when he sees one. I believe that an engineer is qualified to make that statement.

Goody

ManM

Hrm, I too am one of those electrical engineer types, but I would have to agree with Goody. I'm still a tad wet behind the ears (fresh out of college!), but in my experience engineering boils down to models and algorithms. And even though we put them into practice, we don't completely know all the detailed theory behind them. Face it, in most cases we don't have to. The physics of PN junction doesn't cross my mind when I think of a transistor. Now if something goes wrong, I know enough about physics to troubleshoot. However, I would never put myself in the same ballpark as the scientist who first made the model.

liquid

Ah, as I suspected, you fall right into category number 3. Surprising really, given your experience.

You stated this:
I assume that it refers to this statement, as it is the only part of my first post that I can see any tenuous link to:
It is plainly obvious that you are talking a substantial load of baloney. If one does not take fundamental physics courses, then one's profession cannot be scientific? Wrong

It is going to be hard covering this in a logical manner, but here goes - numbered points for reference.

1. Biologists do not take these courses. Nor do many chemists. Nor any members of smaller scientific fields, such as paleontology. Therefore, many fields are perfectly scientific with little or no fundamental physics.

2. Historically many physicists themselves did not take these courses, or have any conception of these ideas. This did not prevent them being good, often brilliant scientists.

3. Children take science lessons from an early age, starting from no physical knowledge. They apply the scientific method perfectly adequately, at a lower level of complexity. Therefore it is possible to be scientific with little to zero levels of physical knowledge.

4. Research in many areas of 'physics', often perfectly fundamental, is actually no longer conducted by physics departments, but engineering departments. Important fields include thermodynamics, aerodynamics and fluid mechanics. Both these have particularly active research frontiers using the scientific method, all sorts of ingenious experiments and data collecting.

Engineers are not just designers and problem solvers, but are trained in scientific research as well, to a greater or lesser degree. I suspect your encounter of industrial engineers is not representative of the thousands of engineers that toil away conducting scientific research in R&D departments and universities.

5.You might even consider thermodynamics especially as a 'fundamental' field - I am not sure. But it was perfectly good for joule, kelvin, mach, carnot and the rest - all great scientists, all great engineers (some more so than others). Compared to physics students, we are actually more trained in these fields, as a whole.

Just because we tend to deal with macro and meso phenomena does not invalidate what we do as scientific work. In fact, in the aforementioned areas, we conduct a lot of research at the micro level. Individual atoms have become important on some of our frontiers.

6. I could give you a whole variety of physical phenomena that engineers have discovered, and a whole variety of empirical research performed. You want papers? I will give you scientific papers produced by engineers in engineering departments.

7. Engineering is the application of scientific principles to physical problem solving. Yes, it requires design, yes it requires making (although). It also requires massive amounts of scientific research and method. This is why I get irritated by people like you who do not regard engineers as scientific. And many researchers are true scientists.

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Phew! Rant over with... take a breath now...

liquid

ManM, don't be so hard on yourself. I hope you have changed your opinion in regard to my reply. In your case personally, you seem to be judging yourself against professional researchers. As a recent gradute, that is a highly misleading comparison. It is also highly misleading to solely concentrate on electrical engineering, when there are tens of disciplines and thousands of fields.

Neither does your average physics gradate. The research frontier is at least one level of complexity below what they learn, often more (for you must trawl through a masters and phD before you can even begin in most cases).

Just because you don't deal with microphysics does not disqualify you from being a scientist. Even if you conduct simple component reliability experiments to identify likely causes of faults., that is performing empirical science. It's not a great fundamental insight, but then neither is half the stuff published by physicists. It is useful, competent science.

I think you probably underestimate what you know in any case... As an aerospace engineer, I had covered all sorts of electronic physics in my freshman year, to a further level than the physicists had by that stage, as it happens (they were concentrating on relativity). So I would imagine you would know far more.


By definition, the invention of the transistor was engineering - application of scientific principles to solve a technical problem. The fact that there is massive crossover and some unanimity with pure research science is no coincidence, and is indeed the norm.

Valmorian

I would disagree with that. What exactly qualifies the Engineer to be able to recognize design in EVERYTHING when he/she sees it?

Certainly, I would trust an engineer who builds bridges for 20 years to be able to identify an artificial bridge. I would not, however, say he/she is more qualified than anyone else to determine if a living creature was designed, or the universe for that matter.

liquid

I was wondering... goody2shoes - what is your actual position on the creation/evolution debate?