The Scientist and the Engineer 59 



tive," but he does tend to find his satisfactions in different 

 ways. Sir Francis Bacon once said that "we cannot com- 

 mand nature except by obeying her." Broadly speaking, the 

 engineer gives most of his attention to the first part of the 

 statement, the scientist is more concerned with the last part. 

 The scientist discovers the rules and the engineer plays the 

 game. The typical scientist begins to lose interest in a sub- 

 ject almost as soon as he understands it. For the engineer 

 this is where the fun begins, since he gets his satisfaction 

 by using new ideas to make new things. In large part this 

 satisfaction derives from creating a new physical entity that 

 can do something that has never been done before, but the 

 engineer is also likely to be pleased that the device con- 

 tributes to the welfare and happiness of human beings. Many 

 so-called pure scientists, on the other hand, take pride in 

 the fact that the work they are doing "has no obvious prac- 

 tical appHcation." It may be easier to understand this atti- 

 tude if we regard it as the modern version of the snobbery 

 of the Chinese aristocrat who let his fingernails grow to 

 ridiculous lengths and bound the feet of his women to 

 demonstrate that they didn't have to do anything useful in 

 order to enjoy their high position. 



Before we become too critical of the scientist, it would 

 be well to remember that many of the most "useless" of 

 his discoveries turn out in the long run to have the most 

 far-reaching practical benefits. Perhaps his sense of superi- 

 ority is an essential though unattractive device to protect 

 him from the need to produce some new thing simple but 

 attractive enough to gain immediate popular applause. 



The scientist is, by and large, more skeptical than the 

 engineer. His primary obUgation to advance knowledge 

 necessarily causes him to question the validity of existing 

 knowledge. For him, doubt is the beginning of wisdom. 

 Not so the engineer; like other practical men, he has to 



