Alexis Sugden

What is Engineering, and what does it allow us to do?

As I perceive it, engineering is an umbrella term used to describe the diagnosis, recognition and understanding of problems, the solving of these problems by bringing in experts from different fields, and co-ordinating them in a logical way to allow each to hone in on the potential methods for completion. Whether these problems revolve around energy security, food production, healthcare application, climate change, architecture or aerospace, is almost irrelevant from an inside perspective, as the same fundamental engineering principles will be applied from start to finish. These are applied in a framework which I believe is portrayed effectively in "Introduction to Chemical Engineering: Tools for Today and Tomorrow" by Kenneth A. Solen and John N. Harb, where problems are first defined, solutions are evaluated and implemented, then results are checked. 

Engineering principles and frameworks allow large problems to be solved, and great advances to be made, which would not have been possible to achieve with messy irregular planning and implementation methods. Engineering requires strong teamwork abilities, and it must be accepted that not every member of a team is an expert at everything, but when this acceptance is accomplished, rapid progression can be made. This is why the sending of a space telescope into orbit can only be achieved by the presence of a large team of highly sophisticated engineers, rather than a group of independents who fail to take advantage of each others' core competencies. Because of this, it seems evident that engineering principles can help to unlock higher level capabilities, theoretically, allowing us to be more ambitious with projects that are aimed at improving humanity, such as creating the conditions required for nuclear fusion in order to provide limitless clean energy, or to create space telescopes that help map out the history of our universe (even if there is some scepticism about whether studying space is actually a valid expenditure of resources for humanity). My brief opinion on this would be, yes, space study is a valid expenditure of resources, because how do we know we're not in cosmological danger, if we don't understand the cosmos? 

Anyway, engineering principles allow us to broaden our horizons in terms of what we believe to be possible, which in my eyes is positive, because I don't believe any big projects will become a reality unless there is a spark in the eyes, a dream in someone's head, and an initial level of faith which says it can actually be achieved. If we as a civilisation believe that more advanced achievements are within our capabilities, then more individuals and collectives are likely to attempt to take bigger, and more ambitious challenges on, because engineering principles can highlight a sense of feasibility in an idea, counteracting how preposterous this certain idea may have seemed at first. For example, in 1927, when Georges Lemaître proposed the "Hypotheses of the primeval atom" (The Big Bang), it would likely have seemed preposterous to him that less than a century later, we would create a telescope to capture photo evidence of this phenomena, and even now it seems like a fantasy to many. But with a dream in someone's eyes, the framework of timeproof engineering principles, and precision at the pinnacle of terrestrial capabilities, it came to fruition. However, I am unsure whether the majority of the credit of the JWST should go to the capabilities of the engineers involved, or to the physicists that calculated its possibility! Please enlighten me as to which of these two challenges would have been most demanding!

In a way, I suppose it could be said that engineering capabilities give us a pathway to make dreams come true.