This is a bit of a misconception
R. Allan Reese wrote:
There is a truism: any fool can build a bridge that will stand up, but it
takes an engineer to build a bridge that will *just* stand up.
Bridges just stand or they collapse. There are natural bridges that no
engineer designed, having existed for thousands of years. Nothing special.
Since decisions to build a bridge are made before it can stand up, an
engineer simply has to have better arguments to convince others that the
bridge will not collapse, that it is affordable and useful. A built bridge
must stand up first in language and then maybe it can be build and holds up
to the forces it is claimed to withstand
Conversely, a question quoted from a book on motoring written in the 1930s
(called "You have been warned"):
Q. What is the difference between roads built by the Romans and those
built in recent times?
A. Roads built by the Romans are still usable today.
All true, but first, the romans build many roads for example over mountains,
which later proved impractical, hence several sections survived for reasons
of disuse.
Second, the romans used brute force technology (heavy stones), a material
that happens to be more durable than asphalt.
Third, roman engineering did not require much engineering knowledge - not to
downplay their accomplishments. I don't want to say that every child can
build a roman road, but every child has the knowledge of how to put stones
next to each other. Roman roads are largely institutional accomplishments.
Imagine organizing the labor force to build then, years of commitments,
planning for use by their troops. This is true also for design. It rarely
is an individual accomplishment
Everyone has the basic capacity to design, but not everyone is listened to
and granted the ability to enroll others in their projects, and not everyone
has the institutional backing to get an idea realized. We are talking about
individual designers and fail to see that design is a node in a complex web
of social practices
klaus
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