junior1 at ibm.net (Bernie Arruza) writes:
>Then they will stop being engineers, won't they :-). Looks
>like we are back where we started. I hope we concentrate
>on the rule more than the exception. Dropping your career
>as an engineer and going back to school to study neurosciences
>is not that easy. The problem, and I would hope you both
>agree, is that there is a desperate need for a new discipline.
>Universities need to come up with a new breed of individuals
>that are comfortable with being engineuroscientists (please,
>quote me on this one and quote me frequently <G>)
I'm afraid I disagree. I really don't see why there is a "desperate
need" for a new discipline. Engineering may be defined as the
application of scientific principles towards solving problems of
a practical nature. These principles are usually discovered through
the work of scientists, and then practically applied by engineers.
(That is a gross generalization, of course -- most scientists will
need to do some "engineering" at some point in their work, and some
engineers will undertake research.)
The questions of how the brain works, and how it is related to the mind,
are *scientific* questions, not matters of engineering. How could
engineering help solve these questions? And what kind of engineering,
anyway? Civil? Chemical? Electrical? Waste management? :)
Kevin
-----------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Spencer
Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory and Beckman Institute
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
kspencer at s.psych.uiuc.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------
