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The engineer is, I suppose, by definition, the man who gets things done. If so he is at the other extreme from the philosopher. For philosophers are notorious for never settling anything they undertake and they talk about the same issues generation after generation. The principal need of a philosopher is a place to sit. Unlike the mathematician he does not, strictly speaking, need even a pencil. Plato recorded, or pretended to record, the conversation of a great philosopher, Socrates, who apparently never wrote a line. The dialogue about gnarled and knotty questions perfectly typifies the philosophic enterprise. Perhaps you thought I was going to say that not only the engineer but the philosopher, too, gets things done and then tell you the great things we do. Far from it. I will not go so far as to say that a philosopher who does something or gets things done is not worth his salt. But I recall that the first philosopher who proposed the program that philosophers should not only explain the world but also change it was Karl Marx. The distinction is unnecessary: a philosophic idea whose time has come irresistably realizes itself and changes the world. In saying that the engineer does get things done, I have in mind the simple fact that he has literally transformed the face of the world. He can do so because of the unique necessities of his profession of keeping one foot inside the door of the laboratory of the theoretical scientist and the other in the world of men and the public community with their wants and needs. A purely theoretical scientist, if there is such a person,
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