8 ms·

Can we agree that any definition of "engineer" that excludes Filippo Brunelleschi or Leonardo da Vinci (as yours does) is worthless?

• kabouseng 13y ago
  Thats a bit of a random litmus test ;D I would hope we would have gone a bit further than the Renaissance era in how we define professional fields. Would you also call Leonardo da Vinci a doctor, since he did breakthrough anatomical work? In that same vein, would you call a random person digging up graves and dissecting corpses a doctor today? Would you let them operate on you?
  • TheCoelacanth 13y ago
    Leonardo da Vinci wasn't a doctor because he didn't practice medicine. He studied corpses; he didn't operate on living humans. On the other hand, it would be ludicrous to say that Hippocrates wasn't a doctor. I wouldn't let either operate on me, but I also wouldn't let a licensed doctor from 1920 operate on me either. Modern doctors have vastly superior medical knowledge compared to historical doctors, but that doesn't mean that historical people who practiced medicine aren't doctors.
    • kabouseng 13y ago
      So let me get this straight. You guys insist on using the definition of the word engineer as stated in the renaissance era, not the modern definition, but also then want to apply that definition to software, which didn't exist for another 400 years afterward? Me thinks the logic isn't quite sound...
  • zb 13y ago
    There is nothing random about it, the term was invented during the Renaissance to describe exactly such people.