| Bernd Paysan 2007-03-07, 8:25 am |
| Ulf Wiger wrote:
> Personally, I work in industry. While it would be nice to have
> our product designs be provably correct, this is usually only
> possible in theory, if that. We have to rely on intuition, but also
> have to tune our intuition by relating, as much as we can, to
> scientific knowledge. Comparing to some of the previous examples,
> this could then be described as "bad science" (or possibly, not
> science at all). I think that would blur the point - the point
> being that, by that criterion, it cannot possibly _be_ done
> scientifically. There is no scientific theory or method that
> fully covers what we need to do.
There are some cases in recent history where industry was quite ahead of the
scientific community, e.g. plate tectonics. Oil prospectors used plate
tectonics long before it became an accepted theory, simply because you can
find oil when you apply it (i.e. it simply works). And oil prospectors
don't publish papers, they simply find oil (and how they do is kept secret
by the company they work for as competitive advantage).
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
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