Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!west!grapevine!regenmeister!chrisp
From: chrisp@regenmeister.EBay.Sun.COM (Chris Prael)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Art vs. Engineering
Message-ID: <1343@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM>
Date: 17 May 91 18:17:22 GMT
References: <1991May16.231300.13345@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Sender: news@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM
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From article <1991May16.231300.13345@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>, by tsarver@andersen.uucp (Tom Sarver):
> Hey guys,
> This thread is getting a little tiresome.  Everyone is simply reacting

You find something wrong with applying the scientific method?

> based on their own experience.  Like good scientists that we are, let's
> try to find some good references on the subject.  Below I offer two

Finding references may be academically sound, but I question its
applicability to being a scientist.  Scientists experiment.  They also
learn from other people's experiments.  In that sense, most of the 
discussion in this thread has been scientific in character.

> references which deal directly with the debate, and I attempt to
> summarize them here.
 
> In _...Scientific Revolutions_, Kuhn describes a period called "pre-
> paradigm in which participants are attempting to model the results of
> emperical studies (formal and informal) into a paradigm.  This paradigm
> enables them to discuss findings in a common arena of terms.  The
> discipline matures when the paradigm is found to account for a large
> percentage of phenomena.  The discipline then enters an "engineering"
> phase in which people use the results of the discipline to advance
> someone's external goals (society's, an evil genius', etc.)  

This is an interesting speculation, but it is historically inacurate, 
hence bad science.  If you read the history of most scientific 
developments, particularly in physics, you will find that most of the 
major advances were the result of significant engineering advances.  
Major engineering advances, on the other hand, have come most often from 
advances in materials (engineering, though we now call it "material 
science", other engineering advances, or scientific advances).

Most people studiously ignore the fact that Einstein's training was not
in a scientific topic.  His training was in examining patent
applications, a non-academic form of engineering training.

Chris Prael