The Art of Doing Science and Engineering Quotes

“What you learn from others you can use to follow.
What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“I need to discuss science vs. engineering. Put glibly:
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.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the study of failures. There are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Moral: to the extent you can choose, work on problems you think will be important.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Teachers should prepare the student for the student’s future, not for the teacher’s past.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“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.” I say the same to you—you must assume the responsibility for what you believe.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“If you cannot drop a wrong problem, then the first time you meet one you will be stuck with it for the rest of your career. Einstein was tremendously creative in his early years, but once he began, in midlife, the search for a unified theory, he spent the rest of his life on it and had about nothing to show for all the effort. I have seen this many times while watching how science is done. It is most likely to happen to the very creative people; their previous successes convince them they can solve any problem, but there are other reasons besides overconfidence why, in many fields, sterility sets in with advancing age. Managing a creative career is not an easy task, or else it would often be done. In mathematics, theoretical physics, and astrophysics, age seems to be a handicap (all characterized by high, raw creativity), while in music composition, literature, and statesmanship, age and experience seem to be an asset. As valued by Bell Telephone Laboratories in the late 1970s, the first 15 years of my career included all they listed, and for my second 15 years they listed nothing I was very closely associated with! Yes, in my areas the really great things are generally done while the person is young, much as in athletics, and in old age you can turn to coaching (teaching), as I have done. Of course, I do not know your field of expertise to say what effect age will have, but I suspect really great things will be realized fairly young, though it may take years to get them into practice. My advice is if you want to do significant things, now is the time to start thinking (if you have not already done so) and not wait until it is the proper moment—which may never arrive!”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“The reason this happens so often is the creators have to fight through so many dark difficulties, and wade through so much misunderstanding and confusion, they cannot see the light as others can, now the door is open and the path made easy. Please remember, the inventor often has a very limited view of what he invented, and some others (you?) can see much more.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“If you will only ask yourself, "Is what I am being told really true?," it is amazing how much you can find is, or borders on, being false, even in a well-developed field!”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“A second reason the systems engineer’s design is never completed is the solution offered to the original problem usually produces both deeper insight and dissatisfactions in the engineers themselves. Furthermore, while the design phase continually goes from proposed solution to evaluation and back again and again, there comes a time when this process of redefinement must stop and the real problem be coped with—thus giving what they realize is, in the long run, a suboptimal solution.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“In closing I want to remind you yet again of Pasteur’s remark, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” Yes, it is a matter of luck just what you do; it is much less luck you will do something if you prepare yourself to succeed. “Creativity” is just another name for the great successes which make a difference in history.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Almost everyone who opens up a new field does not really understand it the way the followers do.” The evidence for this is, unfortunately, all too good. It has been said in physics no creator of any significant thing ever understood what he had done.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Westerman believes, as I do, that while the client has some knowledge of his symptoms, he may not understand the real causes of them, and it is foolish to try to cure the symptoms only. Thus while the systems engineers must listen to the client, they should also try to extract from the client a deeper understanding of the phenomena. Therefore, part of the job of a systems engineer is to define, in a deeper sense, what the problem is and to pass from the symptoms to the causes. Just as there is no definite system within which the solution is to be found, and the boundaries of the problem are elastic and tend to expand with each round of solution, so too there is often no final solution, yet each cycle of input and solution is worth the effort. A solution which does not prepare for the next round with some increased insight is hardly a solution at all. I suppose the heart of systems engineering is the acceptance that there is neither a definite fixed problem nor a final solution, rather evolution is the natural state of affairs. This is, of course, not what you learn in school, where you are given definite problems which have definite solutions.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“the current situation being a toss-up as to what you want to believe. Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal. Hence you will find that often what you believe is what you want to believe, rather than being the result of careful thinking.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“In 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?”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“is a thin line between having enough self-confidence and being overconfident. I suppose the difference is whether you succeed or fail; when you win you are strong-willed, and when you lose you are stubborn!”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“While the problem of ai can be viewed as, “Which of all the things humans do can machines also do?,” I would prefer to ask the question in another form: “Of all of life’s burdens, which are those machines can relieve, or significantly ease, for us?”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“you should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it. Do not in the process try to make yourself indispensable; if you do, then you cannot be promoted, because you will be the only one who can do what you are now doing! I have seen a number of times where this clinging”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“But be careful—the race is not to the one who works hardest! You need to work on the right problem at the right time and in the right way—”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“If an expert says something can be done he is probably correct, but if he says it is impossible then consider getting another opinion.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“I strongly advise, when possible, to start with the simple simulation and evolve it to a more complete, more accurate, simulation later so the insights can arise early.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“the true gain is in the struggle and not in the achievement—a life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“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.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“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.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“It is also true computers are now often an essential component of a good design.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“In this tour of scientific greatness, the reader is not a passenger, but a driver in training.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“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.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“For one accustomed to the myopia of day-to-day work in a field, so jammed against the swaggering parade of passing trends that one can hardly see beyond them or beneath them, such shifts in viewpoint are exhilarating—a reminder that information may be abundant but wisdom is rare.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“I have often wondered what would have happened if I had had a modern, high-speed computer. Would I ever have acquired the feeling for the missile, upon which so much depended in the final design?”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Is it not fair to say, “The program learned from experience”? Your immediate objection is that there was a program telling the machine how to learn. But when you take a course in Euclidean geometry, is not the teacher putting a similar learning program into you? Poorly, to be sure, but is that not, in a real sense, what a course in geometry is all about? You enter the course and cannot do problems; the teacher puts into you a program and at the end of the course you can solve such problems. Think it over carefully. If you deny the machine learns from experience because you claim the program was told (by the human programmer) how to improve its performance, then is not the situation much the same with you, except you are born with a somewhat larger initial program compared to the machine when it leaves the manufacturer’s hands? Are you sure you are not merely “programmed” in life by what chance events happen to you?”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn