Cosmic Engineering

It’s been a while but finally I’ve got my first post together. It’s a little long, but stick with me! 

Attempting to separate the disciplines of science and engineering, deciding on a definition for each, is a tricky thing to do. Just trying to define what science is alone is an unsolved problem in itself. In vague terms science tries to find how the universe works and the causes for the things we can observe while engineering tries to implement what science has discovered and turn that knowledge into useful technology. So for instance, science discovered quantum physics and engineers took that knowledge and made transistors, allowing computers and all the rest to be built.

 Things are not always so simple however. It was two engineers who first discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, which is the most important piece of observational evidence in modern Cosmology, the study of the Universe.

 But why am I talking about engineers? When I was studying the History and Philosophy of science (some years ago now!) in undergraduate university, I was amazed at just how shaky the basis scientific knowledge can look when careful scrutiny is applied. All kinds of clever arguments have been devised over the years to show the hypocrisies and shortcomings of the theory and practice of science. Despite this, I would often argue to the sceptics in the class, that it just seems to work.

It’s relatively easy to have confidence in fluid dynamics after the Bernoulli effect has successfully been harnessed to fly you from Sydney to London. Most people wouldn’t be willing to dispute the theory of electricity, since it is utilised to make their morning coffee and toast. Once scientific ideas are applied into useful technology, the general public as a rule embrace the underlying science as being ‘correct’ in some sense.

 This kind of ‘Engeneering proves the Science’ kind of theory seems to help explain two of the bigger modern controversies in science, Evolution and the Big Bang. Neither of these can be engineered, they are not a theory we can harness for technology. Sure we can use genetic algorithms inspired by evolution theory and we can even follow the apparent steps towards life, being almost capable of building living organisms from scratch, mirroring what we believe occurred over billions of years. But even if we can do this, it dosn’t prove that’s how it happened the first time! Likewise we can’t build a new universe to harness the power of an engineered Big Bang.

 In these fields of science, what is currently right and wrong is entirely determined by the strength of argument for a given idea. If you apply intense scrutiny to the methods of the scienctist involved and believe it to be flawed at some level, then an individual feels comfortable rejecting the science, since there are no tangible products or technology that work, relying on the underlying science.

 I don’t know what the solution to this issue is from a scientists perspective, but it make go some way to showing why the struggle for legitimacy of science may never be fully resolved.

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