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ChristianKl comments on Confusion about science and technology - Less Wrong Discussion
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How do you know that it works? How would the world look like if engineers got stuff working by tinkering instead of basing their work on the work of scientists?
Because you're typing these words looking at a screen and the words are magically transported all around the world to appear at screens of other people...
Pretty medieval, I think. I don't see why engineers would discover and develop electricity, to start with, never mind all the complicated stuff like transistors and GPS and such.
To be fair to the medievals, they did end up inventing the clock, windmills, spectacles, wheelbarrows, the longbow, astrolabes, chainmail, etc... without the help of scientists.
Perhaps not, but the steam engine was invented by technologists without much input from academics and the first airplane was built at a time when many highly credentialed physicists were saying it was basically impossible. The "engineers just apply theories they get from scientists to concrete problems"-paradigm doesn't really fit the historical record. As often as not, the influence goes in the opposite direction.
Corrections: (1) The astrolabe was around since Hellenistic times, although the spherical astrolabe actually does date from the Middle Ages. (2) It seems likely that the spherical astrolabe was invented with input from "scientists" (natural philosophers).
Oskar Heil was an electrical engineers and at the same time one of the first people to get a patent for a transistor design.
How do you know that science is responsible?