Specialization: Required, but has drawbacks

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Dinosaur, Aug 31, 2008.

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  1. Dinosaur

    Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    The developments of the last century have made it impossible for one individual to cope with the vast amount of data and advanced methodology in almost every field of knowledge.

    My father was an engineer by about 1895. By 1900, he was known as one of the best in the country. He was not a mechanical or civil engineer, nor an efficiency expert, nor a chemical or electrical engineer, et cetera. He was an engineer who did work in all those disciplines.

    Similarly, a doctor or lawyer in that era did everything. There were not cardiologists, urologists, et cetera. There were not patent attorneys, corporate lawyers, defense attorneys, civil suit attorneys, et cetera. There were doctors & lawyers.

    While each professional might have some special area of expertise, all were capable of doing a good job at almost all facets of their field.

    The above became impossible by about 1940/1950 or even earlier. No doctor or engineer could keep up with everything called medicine or engineering. If you did not specialize, you were overwhelmied by the vast amount of data required to be a professional.

    While necessary, specialization can result in some serious problems. The following are two examples from the last 40 or so years.
    • There was a Hyatt hotel with a 10/12 story atrium. There were two cross walks from one side to the other: One about 40 feet off the ground level & one about 80 feet above ground level. The crosswalks collapsed. I do not remember how many were injured or killed.

      The original design specified 80 foot long steel rods to support the two cross walks. Each rod had to be threaded at both ends & in the middle. Late in the construction, it was discovered that no steel mill could fabricate 80 foot long rods with threads in the middle, resulting in a last minute change in the design. In the rush to redesign & order the necessay materials, increased bearing stresses were overlooked. The redesign was faulty, resulting in the disaster.

      There was a time when design engineers were familiar with all phases of the manufacture of the components their design required.

    • There have been at least two cars designed such that the rear spark plugs could not be removed/replaced without removing the motor. One of the designs allowed cutting a hole in in the fender wells so that all you had to do was remover the front tires & drill the holes.

      There was a time when design engineers knew all about maintence of the products they designed.
    I am sure there are other examples of necessary specialization causing problems due to lack of general knowledge of all the aspects of a particular discipline.
     
    Dinosaur, Aug 31, 2008
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  3. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I agree that it's more difficult to be a generalist today because science and engineering have exploded with advances in the last hundred years. There is so much more to know.

    Nonetheless, engineering defects such as the ones in your examples are most often NOT caused by lapses in engineering knowledge. They are generally the results of engineering decisions being made by people other than engineers. Marketing decisions usually drive projects these days, not engineering decisions. That's the reason for those cars with the unreachable sparkplugs. The marketeers decided that the company needed to make that model available with a big V-8 engine, and the only one they had didn't fit right. But rather than spend the time and money to remodel the body or develop a new engine, they just used the old one and got it to market cheap and fast.

    As for architecture, I'm not familiar with your example, but many people blame 9-11 on a political decision that was made when the WTC was half-built. The city of New York banned asbestos insulation, and the upper half of the buildings had to be made with something else. Opinions differ and I don't know who's right, put some people say those buildings would not have collapsed if they'd had the asbestos that was in the original blueprints.

    As a software engineer I can attest to the fact that the most notorious flaws in software today have as much to do with poor management as poor engineering. Microsoft uses quality control processes left over from the 1960s, instead of modern software quality assurance. They also have marketeers driving the software development projects rather than engineers. As a result they keep carrying forward antique operating system software that has been "upgraded" rather than throwing it out and building all new technology using contemporary software technology and modern project management principles. Apple simply tells its customers that if they want to use the new software then they'll have to buy a new computer, and in the long run Macintosh users are far better off for the concession to the engineers.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2008
    Fraggle Rocker, Aug 31, 2008
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  5. iceaura

    iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    One rule of thumb: know something about everything, and everything about something.

    Unfortunately, the first part of that doesn't pay off in cash, the way the second part does.
     
    iceaura, Sep 1, 2008
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  7. Echo3Romeo

    Echo3Romeo One man wolfpack Registered Senior Member

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    Nuclear engineering is another:
    1. Power reactors
    2. Research reactors
    3. Fuels processing
    4. Weapons
    Pick a specialization and it is likely to be all that you do for your entire career. All a NE from Oak Ridge (3), Los Alamos (4), UT Austin (2), and the USS Jimmy Carter (1) have in common is their undergrad coursework. Sometimes not even.
     
    Echo3Romeo, Sep 1, 2008
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