I build little things without a plan or theory (or at least, without a coherent one) fairly regularly, to see what I can learn from them (and because it's fun.)

I build little things without a plan or theory (or at least, without a coherent one) fairly regularly, to see what I can learn from them (and because it's fun.) But building something big? Without a plan or theory, it's hard to justify the time and cost of doing that. (Kind of reminds me of the film Contact: the engineers just kind of built a machine from the plans that the aliens sent, without seeming to do any research at all into what the purpose or theory of operation of it was. My reaction to that was complete incredulity.)