The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

by Richard Hamming

have used the “story” approach, often emphasizing the initial part of the discovery, because I firmly believe in Pasteur’s remark, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” In this way I can illustrate how the individual’s preparation before encountering the problem can often lead to recognition, formulation, and solution.

That leaves me the task of adding “style” to their education, which in practice is usually the difference between an average person and a great one.

One answer is you must concentrate on fundamentals, at least what you think at the time are fundamentals, and also develop the ability to learn new fields of knowledge when they arise so you will not be left behind, as so many good engineers are in the long run.

How are you to recognize “fundamentals”? One test is they have lasted a long time. Another test is from the fundamentals all the rest of the field can be derived by using the standard methods in the field.

In science, if you know what you are doing, you should not be doing it. In engineering, if you do not know what you are doing, you should not be doing it.

In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance . In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.

Close to Inventing by principle be Victor

the accuracy of the vision matters less than you might suppose, getting anywhere is better than drifting, there are potentially many paths to greatness for you, and just which path you go on, so long as it takes you to greatness, is none of my business.

No vision, not much of a future.

forming your plan for your future you need to distinguish three different questions: What is possible? What is likely to happen? What is desirable to have happen?

am preaching the message that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably—that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal for your life.

It has rarely proved practical to produce exactly the same product by machines as we produced by hand.

The Buddha told his disciples, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”