Posted by Rick Denney on July 20, 2001 at 09:17:24:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Damping posted by Joe S. on July 19, 2001 at 19:14:29:
Yeah, you hear stories about such people from time to time. There are prodigies in every field, but they make a poor example for most people to follow.
In most engineering circles, you do actually have to know something before you can do any real design. I'd much rather stand in the building designed by an engineer who knows the difference between a polar moment of inertia and a load centroid than by one who designed it "the way we always have," which is what you get from a cookbook. In fact, if your friend really is the designer of record, and he isn't a registered engineer, then he and the company who built it violated Tennessee law. At some point, a real engineer had to put his seal on those plans, telling the world that he will take the blame if something goes wrong.
Almost all of the knowledge I use on a day-to-day basis I learned on the job, and not in school. But ALL the underlying theory, which is what allows me to be creative rather than just follow someone else's cookbook, I learned in my seven years of college. Yes, you can learn that on your own, but doing so thoroughly and systematically is likely to take about five times as much work as doing so in a university setting. Playing the tuba (and working on them) is an entirely different matter. One does not need to know music theory to be an outstanding performer--though creativity for an orchestral play is likely to be greatly enhanced by a good understanding of the historical and theoretical context of the music.
Rick "who knows not many musicians who have to defend their musical decisions in court" Denney