Then why subject yourself to the “same shit, different day” at work? Philosophical Engineering Robots are programmed to do the same thing day in, day out. Humans are not. Humans are far more capable of doing “awesome stuff, every day”.
Company work sells to the young American a dream, a pathway of do what you’re told and your life will be laid out methodically in front of you. Philosophical Engineering A type of “Faustian bargain,” as Seth Godin puts it in his book, Linchpin. We are willing to give up our spiritual and moral values for wealth, knowledge, or some other form of stability to ease our worried minds. It’s easier to to not have Read more…
You are told to find your passion in life, something that makes you want to get out of bed each morning and go after. Philosophical Engineering However, some of you might not know that passion is comprised of two components: love the work you do + love the place in which you do it. Most of us say that we may either like where we work, but don’t like our jobs. Or vice versa. We Read more…
As a process engineer at a company that manufactures special bar quality steel product, I am tasked every day to find solutions to problems. Philosophical Engineering When a problem is identified, my efforts revolve around putting a system or systems in place as a solution. An example of a system would be automated reports generated by a computer so I don’t have to write them each day. Another would be implementing simple procedures for operators to Read more…
Ever have that feeling of not being in control? It could happen anywhere at any time. Philosophical Engineering As scientists, we attempt to control the world around us, to dominate the landscape of our studies with equations and theories to predict every movement of the elements of our world. At times, the desire for power of knowledge can be destructive, as in the case of the bombing of Hiroshima. However, at some point, we must Read more…
I remember when I was back in school, a professor put a graph of the results from an experiment on the overhead screen that looked like random dots. Philosophical Engineering He further proceeded to tell us that the data could be predicted by the following trend hoping to get published in a scientific journal with this work. When we think of science, we typically think that the work can lead to exact solutions that explains Read more…
Foundations seem to continually shift in science, classical mechanics describing the world as a cause and effect relationship of matter, quantum mechanics describing instead, a mysterious particle and wave duality, and the possibility of string theory suggesting multiple dimensions. Philosophical Engineering With novel ways of looking at the world being proposed to solve new problems and find new solutions to old ones, we should be careful to keep an open mind when approaching new ideas.
We can never speak about nature without speaking about ourselves, because what we see depends on how we look at it. An electron can either be a wave or a particle depending on the experiment that we perform. Philosophical Engineering According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the observer and the observed can’t be separated. It was first believed that scientific descriptions could exist independently of the human observer, thus being objective. However, when one tries to Read more…
The equation Einstein developed, E=mc^2, is now the iconic scientific relation not only in the world of physics, but also in pop culture. Its implications reach beyond our association of this equation being developed by Einstein and all of its depictions in scientific culture. Philosophical Engineering Most science programs begin with classical mechanics, treating the world as fundamental building blocks that can be broken down and built up again with known rules, assumptions, and specific Read more…
Physicist Fritjof Capra explains in his book, The Tao of Physics, a new paradigm for thinking in science. Quantum mechanics is changing the way we view the world, no longer that of classical Newtonian mechanics. Philosophical Engineering Fritjof first examines the relationship between the part and the whole. Newtonian mechanics, though sufficient to explain our practical interactions with the world, are proven unsatisfactory at lower levels. Newtonian mechanics, when studied and applied to solving problems, suggests that Read more…