Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an introduction to engineering.
In an earlier age, there was a great distinction in the public mind between science and engineering. Whereas the scientist was thought of as an intellectual, motivated by desire for knowledge and order, the engineer was thought of as a busy, practical person, involved in producing something for which the public was willing to pay. The scientist might discover the laws of nature, but the engineer would be the one to exploit them for use and profit. Historically, however, the distinction has not been valid. In every century, noted theoretical scholars were deeply involved in the practical application of their own work. For example, in the seventeenth century, Christian Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, mathematician, and physicist who developed theorems on centrifugal force and wave motion, also developed the first accurate timepiece. In the eighteenth century, the British mathematician and philosopher Sir Isaac Newton was credited not only with advancing theories of mechanics and optics, but also with inventing the reflecting telescope, a direct application of his theory. In the nineteenth century, the French chemist and bacteriologist Louis Pasteur first proposed theories of disease, and then set about the discovery of vaccines for anthrax and rabies, as well as the process for purification that bears his name to this day. I propose that the popular detachment of science from engineering has not provided us with a useful model for comparison, and perhaps not even an historically correct one.