Yes, there is a dynamical equilibrium between engineering and science; with "analogical engineering" often occurring before "direct explanation". So, accidenta

Yes, there is a dynamical equilibrium between engineering and science; with "analogical engineering" often occurring before "direct explanation". So, accidental discoveries -> lenses -> optics -> telescopes -> theory of gravity -> etc. The full picture is here is very subtle. The idea is that we are in the world as animals engaged in a protoypical science in every action we perform: we interpret causes, take goal-directed actions, refute universals, etc. Our conscious mind is a kind of "local, heuristical science" of our own bodies and how we relate to our environments. This "native science" gives rise to a "naive engineering" where we play around with possible tools and see what they do. You then bootstrap those tools to do non-naive science. Science, in the sense I mean of mechanistic explanation involving making claims about stuff that exists, how it works, how it interacts etc.... must necessarily proceed engineering (in the sense of "utility of coincidences"). But it's an incredibly naive science of basic animal intelligence at first -- a science of one's body hurting finding out why, etc. -- you need to supplement this with iterated engineering-science loops to "get to the stars". The problem with Hume, and the sceptics in this thread, is they either have this backwards; or have no science at all in the picture. Hume just assumed science is impossible because we were just "engineers of images in our heads", rather than "scientists of our bodies"