41–50 of 57 posts
science is about 'why', while engineering is about 'how'.
Generally accepted philosophy of science is positivism, which states that 'why' in general is unanswerable and we should satisfy ourselves with descriptions. Therefore science is more about precise descriptions and their predictive power.
"Imagine trying to build a device based on the information that acceleration due to gravity is probably between 9 and 13 m/s^2" Software engineering must be a special case. Half of it is about handling uncertain states and preparing for unknown future uses.
Actually, this is where I stopped reading because in my opinion the author gets it exactly backwards. Engineers need to build things with safety thresholds. Most devices will probably experience situations where it is accelerating at a greater rate than just that due to gravity. Engineers work in a messy world without controls and try their best to deal with non-ideal scenarios. They live in a world where a cow often…
Science on it's own is not robust enough to build models for real-world decision making - things we could consider in the domain of engineering. If a scientific paper finds a correlation between red wine and heart disease this may be interesting and important clue for scientific study but this is not enough to develop a model of nutrition and certainly not enough to recommend consuming red wine for hearth health. Plenty of people don't realize this and you see articles "red wine good for your heart" - without a robust model of human metabolism/nutrition we just can't make claims like this. The food pyramid is a perfect example of this flaw.
However, there are also some forms of engineering that are not very science based, you get a process or product to work and you don't exactly know why. You can still use scientific methods to get to a safer, more controlled process but don't necessary exactly know why something works. We call that "taking the art out of engineering" and it's an important part, especially in large scale manufacturing.
Engineering, in contrast, is the technique of using science to produce tools we can consistently use in the world. Semantically, wouldn't one call a neanderthaler creating/perfecting a useful tool an engineer as well, even though science was not really used directly?
I think people get hung up on the idea of applied science, since applying science is typically one of the best methods of engineering. Our ability to engineer things is dramatically improved by applying the knowledge, techniques, and processes provided by science. But it's not the only way.
I feel the article dances around what the fundamental purpose of engineering is - that is to create viable real-world objects by solving problems of constraints and tradeoffs. Nearly all meaningful engineering problems can be posed as a series of constraints and tradeoffs. Even if you were out trying to sharpen a stick into a spear, you're intuitively (and probably iteratively) solving the problem of constraints and tradeoffs.
When you set out the make the spear, you might not even know the full extent of the problem. You know that at a high level the spear (assume a throwing spear) must be long enough to be stable in flight, short enough to not be a burden, heavy enough to fly well and deliver energy on impact, light enough to throw, thin though to grip easily, but thick enough to not shatter on impact, pointy enough to inflict damage, but not too pointy for the point to be too fragile.
You now get to solve this problem. Sometimes as an engineer you might get the exact values of these constraints given to you, sometimes you have to go find them, and sometimes you wing it. You can use science (work from material properties, dynamics, deformation, biomechanics), you can use some 'direct empirical evidence' (screw around and guess and check =D ) and iterate through a bunch of spear designs, or some rules of thumbs that your uncle told you or a mix of all.
The most important thing is that you are managing trade-offs and constraints at some level.
Surely engineering is just about building stuff that works, or "meets requirements". Is there any kind of engineering for which that is basically not the case? Science is about understanding the natural world by building and testing hypothesis. I can think of some grey areas. For example, in the 20th century it was discovered that the harmonic modes of oscillation of large structures, like bridges, was rather importa…
First, even the math and science behind the structural harmonic response was made by an engineer, it was a science advance after all. They allowed people to better understand the world, creating models of phenomena that are observable. Of course, engineers can do science, as anybody else can, and that does not transform science endeavours into engineering endeavours.
However, it must be noted that there is a lot of science in engineering: people can approach engineering problems and subjects with a science mindset so they can advance engineering. A new DSP algorithm is basically math, even if it is math with some constraints set by engineering realities, and may be analysed as such - more often than not, by people with engineering degrees, who are doing science.
Both engineering and science are less about fields of knowledge and more about process: if you are trying to understand something, and to observe things that exist in a methodical way, aiming to create a model that can reproduce and predict events, you are doing science. If you are trying to design something that help you efficiently achieve some practical goal, you are doing engineering.
Surely engineering is just about building stuff that works, or "meets requirements". Is there any kind of engineering for which that is basically not the case? Science is about understanding the natural world by building and testing hypothesis. I can think of some grey areas. For example, in the 20th century it was discovered that the harmonic modes of oscillation of large structures, like bridges, was rather importa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really know, computer science seems concerned with equipping the student with the best tools to solve a problem, and mastery in the creation of them. Computer engineering concerns itself with similar concepts, but at a lower level of abstraction. It's still not EE, which is lower still. I studied computer/electrical engineering for part of my undergrad, and computer science for my masters. The biggest differe…
"Computer science" courses are mostly misnamed. The research faculties they're located in are usually scientific (in that they concern research into computability and computation), however what undergraduate students mostly learn is the primitive form of engineering that we've gleaned from that science so far. I have an MEng in Computing, because my alma mater is one of the few that realises the distinction.
It is a science to be able to build programs and prove things about them. It is way more abstract maths than anything in engineering (linear algebra still has some physical grounding in reality, where category theory is more for the organization of mind).