Posts tagged as:

engineering

Inquiry in Engineering, Design in Science:
Completing the Matrix

June 7, 2010

The focus of science is inquiry, and the focus of engineering is design. Just as sensory and motor neurons run antiparallel through the structure of the body, so inquiry and design run antiparallel through the structure of knowledge. Eye and hand, perception and action, measuring and making, science seeking knowledge, engineering seeking function.
I’ve been exploring [...]

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Knowledge and causality in inquiry and design

June 3, 2010

The structure of science and engineering, a big mistake, and a book

See also: “The Antiparallel Structures of Science and Engineering”

An effect may have one possible cause, or many. The weight of a stone has a single cause, gravity, but the flight of a stone coming over a wall could have one of many [...]

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How to study for a career in nanotechnology

February 24, 2010

Students often ask me for advice on how to study for a career in nanotechnology, and as you might imagine, providing a good answer is challenging. “Nanotechnology” refers to a notoriously broad range of areas of science and technology, and progress during a student’s career will open new areas, and some are yet to be [...]

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Exploratory Engineering:
Applying the predictive power of science
to future technologies

June 26, 2009

While I’m on the subject of foundational concepts in the relationship between science and engineering, here’s the outline of a methodology for applying current science to assess lower bounds on the capabilities of a select subset of future technologies. (As many of you know, some of those lower bounds are startlingly high.)
A subset of the [...]

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The Antiparallel Structures
of Science and Engineering

June 22, 2009

Science and engineering are inseparable domains of thought and action, linked by a shared language of mass and energy, molecules and thermodynamics, physical systems and physical law. This shared language makes communication deceptively easy — easy, because scientists and engineers can see every detail in the same way; deceptive, because they see these details in [...]

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Science and Engineering:
A Layer-Cake of Inquiry and Design

June 16, 2009

Inquiry is the essence of science, design is the essence of engineering, and in their pure forms, these activities are utterly different. Scientific inquiry draws observations from the world to reshape the mind; engineering design projects ideas from the mind to reshape the world. One is an eye, the other a hand, afferent and efferent [...]

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How to Understand Everything (and why)

May 17, 2009

In science and technology, there is a broad and integrative kind of knowledge that can be learned, but isn’t taught. It’s important, though, because it makes creative work more productive and makes costly blunders less likely.
Formal education in science and engineering centers on teaching facts and problem-solving skills in a series of narrow topics. It [...]

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