Characteristics of Engineering

Emerging out of the short historical overview in the last chapter is a view of engineering that highlights a number of characteristics. The most immediate or obvious is that the purpose of engineering is to be useful by creating products and services that meet needs expressed by society (or any subset thereof). To that end, engineering uses scientific knowledge, but judges that knowledge not as to whether it represents truth, but as to whether it is useful in achieving the purpose of engineering. For example, whereas both the expanding universe and the first law of thermodynamics are true, the value to engineering of the first piece of knowledge is zero, but that of the second very great.