What is Engineering?

One of the causes of the current decline of the United States is the lack of interest in engineering. Over the last century and a half, many of the greatest triumphs of this nation have been engineering – railroads, bridges, cars, air conditioning and refrigeration, electric power – the list is incredibly long... And all items that we take for granted.


There is a huge public misunderstanding of what constitutes engineering. Especially on television, most accomplishments attributed to ‘science’ or ‘scientists’ are actually engineering. “Scientists are working on that right now.” No, they aren’t! Engineers are!

Science is the attempt to determine the characteristics of the world around us from known or observed data.

Engineering is the art of using knowledge, objects, and methods that perform definite known functions to derive other knowledge, objects, and methods that perform other functions.

If the objective is knowledge, quite possibly the field is science.

If the objective is function, then the field is almost certainly engineering.

Give engineers the respect they are due. And maybe, just maybe, return this country to its position as the greatest nation on God’s green Earth.