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/sci/ - Science & Math

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3290652 No.3290652 [Reply] [Original]

"I was educated as a civil engineer, and we were all taught that Nature obeyed certain Laws, and that these Laws of Nature had been discovered by dead men and passed on to us, and if we learnt to apply these laws then we could build bridges and so on that would stand up. Never mind that numbers of our bridges were falling over while bridges built by the Romans were still standing up thousands of years later, even though the Romans didn't even know about Newton's Laws of Motion or the law of gravity!

Being a good student, I diligently applied these laws in my first design projects, the abject failure of which led to an interview with my structures lecturer which changed my life. This gentleman kindly explained to me how engineers actually think, which in fact bore no relation to applying laws of nature at all. They simply consulted the Code of Practice and applied a few rule-of-thumb formulae and Bingo! Not only was this method extremely simple to follow, differing from the method used by the Romans only by the addition of more experience and better materials, but achieved the engineer's objectives: to minimise the clients costs and avoid litigation. I rather suspect that doctors use the same approach, having forgotten everything they ever knew about microbiology the day they qualified.

So, I decided to abandon engineering and devote my life to science, to the discovery of these laws. So, it was a difficult thing for me when I eventually had to face the fact that this Parliament in the sky which legislated the laws which Nature was obliged to obey was just as absurd, even more so in fact, than this myth of a scientific practice founded on this marvellous legislation."

>> No.3290655

>>3290652

Is this true? Are the laws of nature not really needed in engineering? What really are these laws of nature anyway? Why are they like this and to what extent do they apply?

I have a feeling this guy has no idea what he's talking about and should stick to philosophy but I was wondering what you guys thought.

Rest of article here, but its not all that relevant to the question.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/iup.htm

>> No.3290698

>>3290655
It's less true today, because we can program the laws of nature into software and simulate any kind of conditions to test the validity of designs. It sort of speeds up the trial and error process of engineering by a million-fold. But you certainly can't derive engineering laws from physical laws; you can only verify their efficacy.

The existence of "laws of nature" are a philosophical concept that is closely tied theistic philosophy -- first that of pythagoras, plato and aristotle, and later to christian philosophy. It views nature as the domain of something superior to nature, subject to laws like the laws of a king. From this, science came about, to try to discover those laws -- although the laws of science are empirically induced "laws" which would technically be better called "observed patterns" rather than "laws".

>> No.3290714
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3290714

lolno

silly engineer, you need physics to do your jobs, you just can't derive from first principles the best way to do your jobs because:
a) You're too stupid
b) That takes too much time

>> No.3290719

>>3290655
>Is this true? Are the laws of nature not really needed in engineering?

It's more that you don't need to understand the intricacies of classical newtonian mechanics to know that arches are strong.

Of course, knowing how much cable you need and how tight it has to be for a suspension bridge can be (and you can bet they WILL be) calculated using physics, but you don't need to go back to first principles every time you build a suspension bridge.

>> No.3290733

wow, great post I'm gonna give you some kush for that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Kush

>> No.3290747

The third paragraph is a total non-sequiter. The first two paragraphs speak against the importance or even use of natural laws.. then for no apparent reason he says "So I decided to study natural laws".

>> No.3290756

Unfortunately, engineering something often times doesn't include important stuff like safety, reliability, and maintenance. For example, one can look at some highway overpasses and see steel bars exposed and rusted. The designers obviously haven't thought about weathering.

>> No.3290798

>>3290756

You must be in the US, where engineering are a special kind of stupid not known to proper engineers.

>> No.3290799

>>3290798
>>3290756
Shit's old, government is herp derping, and it's a big country

>> No.3290829

Look at it this way... is it possible to derive from an expert knowledge of chemistry the principles of being a good chef? No, it's not.

>> No.3290855

>>3290829
>is it possible
Yes, it is. It is also inordinately time consuming and a complete waste of effort in comparison to just reading some good books on the culinary arts.

>> No.3290859

>>3290655

No OP it is not true. I myself am a biochemical engineer and I've come to learn that the main difference is that in some cases you will neglect/assume-to-be-constant certain insignificant parts of equations because you are mainly interested in getting some system to work properly efficiently, instead of trying to model everything perfectly.

The focus of the field is just different.