Comments on: Science, Engineering, & Growing Up

by: Rosie

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 18:41:40 +0100

These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.

by: drshellie

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 01:47:30 +0000

I am not too particular about being called a scientist vs. being called an engineer. I suppose I’d still say “I’m a scientist,” since “I’m an engineer” sounds like I should either build bridges or design circuits.

by: skookumchick

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:22:10 +0000

Thanks for this post, Dr. Shellie. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, and I’m working on my own “how did I get to be an engineer” post too. So where did we get this idea that engineers apply science? Because I know plenty of people who call themselves engineers who are MILES away from “applying” science on the way they’re really “doing” science. So maybe identity is all that is really important, identifying with one group or another, maybe that demonstrates some kind of philosophical commitment rather than any “real” intellectual difference. That might explain why people keep using these terms that don’t really fit for what we do. Because, after all, scientists *do* have to worry about business and money - just in the context of their grants, rather than in selling their work to some industry rep.

So, is it important to you to be considered both a scientist and an engineer, rather than a hybrid or something in between the two? or neither, but instead some new kind of investigator?

by: Alethea

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:13:48 +0000

Engineering has always had exactly that aura in my mind, also. There’s a fantastic column in American Scientist about engineering. But in day-to-day life, it’s very satisfying to be able to let yourself have flights of (scientific) fancy as well as work on the problem of implementing how to address those hypotheses. I think many of us have both elements in us - including many self-labeled ‘engineers’.

by: PLK

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 04:13:59 +0000

Consider yours a privileged position at the boundaries of science and technology: that you have the chance to ponder and probe whether your true calling is science or engineering (or a certain mixture of both).

As a mathematician deeply immersed in a world of sometimes breathtakingly beautiful ideas and structures which are not necessarily useful, I sometimes wonder what
impact would I have had on the outside world, had I wandered in a different direction: say, that of engineering (or your kind of world). But that seems too far-away a world for me to have the courage to plunge in it in any depth now.

My guess is that if you had opted for the winding path of cosmology, in 7 years you’d have been very distant from the possibility of being this certain as to where you really belong (that is, of course, if you cared to ask the question then, and if in response to that you didn’t equate finding success with having found your true calling, as one is quite prone to do).

by: drshellie

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 02:21:30 +0000

Nope! All I know is that the intricacies of paint-drying are sometimes known as “polymer science.”

by: Lab Lemming

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 23:32:51 +0000

Do you know much about the tedium of paint-manufacturing? I need to learn all about that for some cutting edge science my boss wants me to figure out…

The project is almost as fascinating as watching the stuff dry.