# Scientific inquiry is an abstracting process while engineering design is a narrowing process [[As a platonic ideal, research is an unscheduled quest for new knowledge and inventions with hard-to-predict outcomes]]. While the processes of creating new knowledge (scientific inquiry) and new inventions (engineering design) are similar in many ways (hence why it makes sense to put them together under the umbrella of “research”) a key difference between them is which way they move along [[The ladder of abstraction]]. Scientific inquiry is an abstracting process. The goal in scientific inquiry is to produce the most abstract piece of useful knowledge you possibly can. You study a physical system, measure it to get data, and then compare those data to create a model - the more abstract the better. The Schrödinger Equation is an excellent example - it correctly describes a large part of the observed universe.[^1] “Theories of everything” are the paragons of scientific inquiry. Engineering design is a narrowing process. The goal in engineering design is to create the most useful artifact you can. You take an abstract concept, create concrete specifications (either implicitly or explicitly) and then produce a useful system. You don’t care about the knowledge, you care about the capabilities of the end product.[^2] Another way to look at it is that in engineering design the only thing that matters is a box and what it can do while in scientific inquiry the only thing that matters is what’s inside the box - the only purpose of the box is to show off what the box can do. Of course, in reality the best work comes from a mixture of the two. Scientific inquiry might require creating a physical system to study or as a tool to observe another system. Engineering design might require creating a new model in order to design to difficult specifications. [[Phenomena-based cycles]] It’s also worth noting that not everything that is colloquially called ’science’ is scientific inquiry and not everything called ‘engineering’ is engineering design. The quest for engineering *principles* (which is often what academic engineering is) is scientific inquiry. Similarly, experimentally verifying theories (like a lot of activity at the LHC) is engineering design. Since the two processes feed off of each other, the boundaries between the two are often fractal. [[Every time you zoom in on a fractal, it presents the same pattern on a different scale]].  ### Related * Concept originally from [[drexlerRadicalAbundanceHow2013]] * [[Physics risk vs. Engineering Risk]] * Academia is well set up for scientific inquiry but not engineering design [[Academia is not a good environment for systems engineering]] * [Differences Between Science And Engineering](https://fs.blog/2013/07/the-difference-between-science-and-engineering/) - Farnam Street blog on this [^1]:Of course, the Schrödinger Equation can predict almost nothing directly because of the curse of dimensionality. The knowledge that comes out of scientific inquiry is often maximally applicable but is minimally useable. Going back to theories of everything, they technically apply to everything but they can barely make any predictions that other things couldn’t. [^2]: I would argue that the capabilities of an artifact include scalability and manufacturability , so a one-off proof-of-concept shouldn’t be the end-goal of engineering design. <!-- #evergreen #publishing/unpublished --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Scientific+inquiry+is+an+abstracting+process+while+engineering+design+is+a+narrowing+process) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Scientific+inquiry+is+an+abstracting+process+while+engineering+design+is+a+narrowing+process)