If you like science fiction would you be a good engineer?

[AlexES16]

Well i love science fiction and love science , especially math and physics. Based on this would you go for engineering? let's say mechanical engineering?

 

[Proton Soup]

you won't really know until you try. lots of people change majors.

 

[arunma]

For what it's worth, I joined an astrophysics research group because I thought it'd be like getting a PhD in Star Trek.

Sadly, I'm not entirely joking.

 

[xxChrisxx]

Why do people keep coming up with questions about doing a job based on something totally uncorrelated? Or asking if someone who does a job does 'insert mundane activity' in the spare time?

If you like science fiction would you be a good engineer?
The answer is fairly obviously - we don't know. They are totally unrelated. Some like sci-fi and are fantasic engineers, others would make dreadful engineers.

 

[humanino]

I think science-fiction is for the most part not as revolutionary as real science. No science-fiction author in the XIXth century would have come up with incredible facts of Nature as quantum mechanics and relativity revealed for instance.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Does watching House make you a good physician?No.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

Well i love science fiction and love science , especially math and physics. Based on this would you go for engineering? let's say mechanical engineering?

How much mathematics do you do in reading science fiction? How many finite element models do you create when reading science fiction? Do you solve many problems? Create many designs? Build many prototypes?

Enjoying reading science fiction means you would enjoy a job reading science fiction, nothing else. If you find that you're wildly fascinated by (does this exist..?) an engineering sub-genre of science fiction, then you might want to have a closer look at engineering math and what it's like to be an engineer. Otherwise, you can't make any conclusions.

 

[Topher925]

No, definitely not.

 

[arunma]

Does watching House make you a good physician?


No.

Maybe watching House will make you a good physicist. Their differential diagnosis scenes feel like doing a physics problem.

 

[Huckleberry]

Check out http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/" by Edwin A. Abbot, written in 1884.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/AuthorTotalAlphaList.asp?AuNum=50" wrote about many things that didn't exist at the time.

The work of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQM0bfBQvDA", though not a science fiction writer, is packed with new ideas centuries ahead of their time. Imo he was a great scientist, and if he had any writing ability he would have made a great science fiction writer as well.

It all starts with an untested idea. Fictional ideas are often wrong, but their value is in the creative thought they inspire, rather than the factual content they contain. Wrong ideas have practical value if they can inspire the right ones.

Science itself is as old as man, but the term scientist became popular in the 19th century, about the same time as the term science fiction.

 

[AlexES16]

Check out http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/" by Edwin A. Abbot, written in 1884.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/AuthorTotalAlphaList.asp?AuNum=50" wrote about many things that didn't exist at the time.

The work of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQM0bfBQvDA", though not a science fiction writer, is packed with new ideas centuries ahead of their time. Imo he was a great scientist, and if he had any writing ability he would have made a great science fiction writer as well.

It all starts with an untested idea. Fictional ideas are often wrong, but their value is in the creative thought they inspire, rather than the factual content they contain. Wrong ideas have practical value if they can inspire the right ones.

Science itself is as old as man, but the term scientist became popular in the 19th century, about the same time as the term science fiction.

Thats very interesting, i think they are really correlated, i mean is about imganination with racional thinking

 

[AlexES16]

No, definitely not.

wow! cross to the chin? xD

 

[humanino]

An argument based on anecdotal evidence could at least mention Asimov

 

[humanino]

It all starts with an untested idea. Fictional ideas are often wrong, but their value is in the creative thought they inspire, rather than the factual content they contain. Wrong ideas have practical value if they can inspire the right ones.

Hilbert had a student who quit mathematics for poetry. He reportedly remarqued "I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.".

 

[Huckleberry]

Hilbert had a student who quit mathematics for poetry. He reportedly remarqued "I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.".

That's funny, and I can see how it would be true.

I loved Asimov's Foundation series. Consider him included.

 

[AlexES16]

Hey Isaac Asimov was a biochemist and obviously liked SciFi.

 

[Studiot]

This quote written in 1791 by a schoolboy who was later the author of one of the most famous poems in the English language, as justification for a poem.

I have often been surprised that mathematics, the quintessence of truth should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause; viz that though Reason is feasted Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily traveling on a dreary desert. To assist Reason by the stimulus of Imagination is the design of the following production.

 

[humanino]

I do not see how Coleridge was supposed to qualify to judge mathematics. He did not ever produce any scientific work. Then again, you might argue that Hilbert is unqualified for imagination... Note that Grothendieck is another mathematician with quite a talent for writing. He has a perfect quotation to answer Coleridge's. In french :

Je me rappelle encore de cette impression saisissante (toute subjective certes), comme si je quittais des steppes arides et revèches, pour me retrouver soudain dans une sorte de "pays promis" aux richesses luxuriantes, se multipliant à l'infini partout où il plait à la main de se poser, pour cueillir ou pour fouiller...

which could tentatively translate

I still remember this striking feeling (rather subjective of course), as if I were leaving an arid desert to find myself suddenly in a kind of "promised land" full of luxuriant treasures, growing profusely at infinity, everywhere where the hand likes to settle to pick or to search.

copied from NCG blog

The mention of Coleridge suggested another name : Lewis Carroll. Cherry picking is fun.

 

[Studiot]

He did not ever produce any scientific work.

should that perhaps read '...original scientific...' ?
He was apparently good at the mathematics of his time and certainly produced some science-fiction-like ideas in his writing.

 

[humanino]

should that perhaps read '...original scientific...' ?
He was apparently good at the mathematics of his time and certainly produced some science-fiction-like ideas in his writing.

That is what I meant. In any case, I have very superficial knowledge of Coleridge's life and works.

 

[BrianConlee]

Do you know of anyone at NASA who is NOT a fan of Star Trek? (at least next generation)