A scientist describes what is. An engineer creates what never was.
Theodore Von KarmanRead
Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been.
Interpretation
Scientists observe and understand the current state of the world, while engineers design and build new possibilities.
This quote emphasizes the distinct yet complementary roles of scientists and engineers. Scientists focus on understanding the natural world through observation and study, uncovering its laws and principles. In contrast, engineers take that knowledge and apply it creatively to design and create new systems, structures, and technologies that have never existed before, ultimately shaping and transforming society.
In practice
In a motivational speech about innovation at a tech conference.
A scientist describes what is. An engineer creates what never was.
Clearly, unless thinking beings inevitably wipe themselves out soon after developing technology, extraterrestrial intelligence could often be millions or billions of years in advance of us. We're the galaxy's noodling newbies.
It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.
We think that life develops spontaneously on Earth, so it must be possible for life to develop on suitable planets elsewhere in the universe. But we don't know the probability that a planet develops life.
Medical judgment can be taught - laboriously, in long periods of training - but it cannot be neatly handed over as the occasion demands it. It is the irreplaceable and untransferable contribution that the healer makes to the suffering individual who would be healed.
Do I get grief for the fact that in communicating, say, about the baboons I'm doing so much anthropomorphizing? One hopes that the parts that are blatantly ridiculous will be perceived as such. I've nonetheless been stunned by some of my more humorless colleagues - to see that they were not capable of recognizing that.
When I realized, in 1978, that Lucy did represent a new species of human ancestor, and that I had an opportunity to name this new species, I realized this was a revolutionary step in understanding human origins.
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