"Engineering and Leonardo da Vinci"

“Leonardo [da Vinci] took an artist’s vision into science. He understood that science, as much as painting, has to find the design of nature in her detail. He gave science what is most needed: the artist's sense that the detail of nature is significant.” – Jacob Bronowski

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.” – Albert Einstein

“[We are] struggling to draw right conclusions from observation of matter in motion, because we haven’t acquired the ability to translate dynamic effect back to cause.” – Jeff Tennant

“The pursuit of beauty and the pursuit of truth are not incompatible.” – George Sarton

It has been said that an engineer is one who seeks to solve a problem by tinkering with science to produce a functionally efficient solution, be it the harnessing of geothermal energy from thousands of feet below the earth’s surface to the placing of a human being on the moon. As engineers, we must first and foremost do well to observe the many natural phenomena and corresponding scientific explanations that inform our technical expertise. But as human beings, our observations should never end there. A sunset can be described mathematically, but does such a description capture the essence of a sunset?

To observe rightly, we must draw from both the scientist and the artist within us…from the mathematician and the poet, from the pragmatist and the visionary. For only then will our faculties and senses work together synergistically to observe the world around us more completely. Without such observations, we will never see the problems we encounter correctly or in the right context, nor will we conceive of real and lasting solutions that harmonize naturally with our environment.

The practice of engineering is and must be a conscious blending of both art and science (the da Vincian principle of “Arte/Scienza” [see Note]); and its principles must be exercised in the context of an entire system, where all elements are part of One Unified Whole, including the principles and practices themselves (the da Vincian principle of “Connessione” [also see Note]). Anything less is beneath us as human beings created in the image of a creating God.

Note:  For an expanded discussion of these and other da Vincian principles, I recommend Michael Gelb’s book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci:  Seven Steps to Genius Every Day.