Wednesday, October 7, 2009

What makes Engineering unique?

Koen's idea about engineering as a way of thinking seems to generalize engineering so much that it essentially can be found and applied everywhere in our everyday lives. It causes me to dig into the essentially difference between an engineering way of thinking and other ways, for example, scientific way of thinking.

What makes an engineering way of thinking different from a scientific one? I think features like innovativeness and feasibility mark the engineering way of thinking. An engineer tries to create some type of new things or modify things based on their existent formats. On the other hand, features like curiosity and imaginativeness symbolize the scientific way of thinking. A scientist strives to discover embedded rules or principles. To me, "to create" and "to discover" make Engineering and Science different from each other.
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