His father was a plumber in Glasgow. He is one of the best geotechnical engineers I have been privileged to work with.
Here is what he emphasized to me many times as I sought to go to the field to collect data:
Old men collect data to prove what they know; young men collect data to find out what they do not know.
Today, somebody sent me this insight:
If an old scientist says something will work they are usually right, if they say it will not work they are usually wrong.
I cogitate on these two statements. Like all simple statements they are insightful, maybe correct, and probably wrong.
As a late Friday posting, I offer these two ideas for cogitation over the weekend.
These two statements have been proved very true to me several times when dealing with older, well established people in my industry. Very profound!
As an older person, I think I could also say that experienced engineers “get across the page” first – John Gadsby taught me that approach, then backfill with the numbers, whether it be data or calculations or both. The observational method sort of comes down the middle and says give it your best shot using available observations and data and calculations, developing contingency plans as part of the design and construction methodology, then use monitoring to fine tune your construction as you go. Definitely what we do in mining. If you want to get fancy then shroud all of this in probability calculations. I wish more people did! As for distinctions between old and new, scientists and engineers, I prefer to believe that there are some very good young engineers that have innate judgement, but I’d still also ask for the opinion of an older engineer that had seen a lot.