Fellow time scientists, Here's my view of the difference between science and engineering:
Someone with better measuring equipment finds a discrepant result while verifying some physical law or accepted truth. That person needs to know the existing truths and create ideas about testing the new result. Questions are formed and hypotheses proposed. Initial testing is done and a paper published for all to see, but not, we hope, like Pons and Fleischmann's paper on cold fusion. Other scientists familiar with the nature of the problem try to verify each hypothesis with their own experiments. Positive results cause someone to propose a theory that explains the results so well that they become accepted truths. A technologist follows the progress of new theories and thinks of ways that they might be applied to life's problems, like renewable energy and uncontrolled growth, or like taking more money from the little people to make the incurably power hungry a bit more powerful than their rivals. If marketing studies show a positive return on investment, engineers are turned loose to solve the problems revealed as the details of building or manufacturing the new thing are studied. It is really difficult to find new problems in the physical sciences. One of the frontiers is brain science - how does any brain work. The human brain is most puzzling, because there are no instruments that provide a clear view of the workings of a living brain. See "101 Theory Drive" by Terry McDermott for a description of one man's research into long term memory (no relationship, and so on). A time nut might be intrigued by the various frequencies that show up in brain waves. The Theta wave (about 3-8 Hz) is essential to memory, as described in McDermott's book. It is also essential to language processing, as hearing or speech. Why? What else does that? There are many oscillators in the brain. At least one of them is good enough that I can sometimes cancel my alarm just before it goes off. Bill Hawkins _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.