In that light, a story from Hapgood, the MIT historian: “Years ago an engineer told me a fantasy he thought threw some light on the ends of engineering, or at least on those underlying his own labors. A flying saucer arrives on Earth and the crew starts flying over cities and dams and canals and highways and grids of power lines; they follow cars on the roads and monitor the emissions of TV towers. They beam up a computer into their saucer, tear it down, and examine it. ‘Wow,’ one of them finally exclaims. ‘Isn’t nature incredible!?’ ”
