Readers letters
As I read Bill Hyde’s letter where he questions the value of engineers’ philosophising, I am reminded why the professions of science and engineering move forward so slowly. We might adopt the title of ‘profession’ for those who work in financial engineering, but I find little evidence of professional behaviour in such a line of work. Professional they may (or may not) be, but say what you like about financial engineers, they are successful at their chosen game. By focussing on what they want to achieve, they manage to invent cleverer and cleverer ways of achieving their goals; inventing new ways to get around the restrictive legislation which stops them from “making loads of money”. Even when they make huge mistakes, they are gifted a bailout. Notice they waste no time pushing against those who would try to stop them, they just focus on “making a ton of cash” and lobby for what they want until they find a new way of achieving it. We could do worse than to study their single-mindedness of focus, and learn from it.
Now I must point out that I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Hyde’s take on renewable energy, and our inability to rely upon such an inconsistent supply. But I think his views on engineers’ thinking are the problem which holds back the potential brilliance of the profession. As a philosopher myself, I know that people tend to see things which tally with their beliefs of the world. This is surely how life works; if you believe that it is possible to do something, then you will find a way to do it. If you believe it will not work, then it will not. In effect you and your beliefs sit at the centre of your own self-fulfilling prophecy. So how do you think anything new was ever invented? It certainly wasn’t by being realistic. It was by holding to a vision of something new, until the means to create it came about. If engineers and scientists, continue on their realistic, evidence-seeking path, they will never move beyond what they have currently discovered. Fortunately there are always those ‘crackpot’ inventors, usually without any formal education (i.e. they don’t believe it is not possible) who can dream beyond our current worldview, not dismissing their dreams as implausible and killing them before they bear fruit. Often their revolutionary inventions often stand idle as the validation of ‘professional’ engineers is sought but never found. Instead of being a global hero, or a brilliant genius, they are labelled a ‘fraud’, ‘mad professor’ or just plain ‘unqualified’.
As a group, engineers and scientists evolve technologies so slowly precisely because we are always trying to explain new technologies from the basis of our current understanding of old ones, and it never works. It’s like trying to explain an internal combustion engine to a horse. I find biomass, wind, wave and solar power a frustrating notion. Despite the huge resources thrown at them, they are clearly never going to be big enough to replace oil. But there is something out there that is, and it deserves our attention, support and the funding which inevitably follows. As long as we continue to chase these renewable red-herrings, we will feel rightly confounded. When you throw the ridiculous notion of man made global warming into the mix, in the ensuing panic we lose all perspective, and the ability to think clearly. Instead of worrying about any of that, we should be focussing upon what we want; to invent a clean, abundant, cheap and reliable energy source which can improve the quality of life for billions. Only then can the ideas occur to us which will lead to these inventions and their global proliferation. I believe engineers would benefit from being less objective, and far more single minded. More prejudiced. We should think of the reasons why we can achieve these things, rather than reasons why we can’t. Even considering the enormous benefit they would bring, in the same way that the investment banker considers the enormous benefit of the money he seeks for himself, would give us a way to achieve our goals. Of course, if you don’t believe anything I’m saying, then you’ll find no value in it. It doesn’t make me wrong or you right, we each get to choose for ourselves. I choose to imagine a better world, and look for the evidence.
Andrew Goodman, Oxford
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