Design Optimism

{Revised 9/25/10}

It's been my experience that scientists are often more optimistic about being able to successfully extrapolate fundamental scientific principles than engineers would be. Maybe that's because we (i.e., engineers) have experience in trying to industrialize such designs and therefore we see how often they don't work out in large scale production even though, in principle, they should.

This is not to say that when designs have problems, physical laws are being violated.  Rather, it is due to incomplete knowledge; knowledge which is sometimes filled in later and at other times, not.