The Artist-Engineer

Despite many years of stereotyping artists as impecunious and impractical people, I have come to realize that I’m much more an artist than the typical engineer.

What is an artist? An artist is a person who has his own vision for what is beautiful and what is worthy of pursuit, and most crucially an artist is someone who is not hindered by discouragement from the outside world. In some sense, to be an artist is to be stubborn and true to oneself.

Taken to an extreme, the artist is the insular, tortured soul epitomized by van Gogh and others, but more moderate artists are found in every walk of life. A politician with a firm agenda not swayed by the mood swings of his constituency is an artist. A chef who refines his distinctive taste and flair rather than appealing to every customer and critic is an artist. A scientist who pursues research he deems worthwhile despite the opinions of journals and funding agencies is an artist.

At the other extreme is the engineer, who is typically characterized by an agnostic approach to solving problems presented to him by the outside world. Engineers are often quantitative, because without quantitation metrics it is not possible to weight the importance of different features and normalize the desires of different customers. Classical education strives, with mixed success, to train the masses into engineers, because historically there are barely enough people to solve the problems that need to be solved (e.g. getting these seeds into that dirt at this depth).

Distinct from both art and engineering is both creativity, the ability to come up with one’s own novel approaches, and intelligence, the ability to quickly incorporate other’s novel approaches. Whereas the artist-engineer spectrum is a tradeoff that is a matter of personal preference and predilection with no position being strictly better than any other position, creativity and intelligence are both decoupled and more of either is always desirable.

True, lasting greatness requires both an artistic drive and an engineering approach. Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great became who they were because they had a vision of what they wanted to accomplish, despite how unlikely that vision was at the outset, but to realize that vision they had to master military strategy, economic management, and political governence. Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus embarked on nigh-impossible voyages, but used the best tools and practices of their time to make these journeys possible.

Engineering is a reliable way of having a good life and doing good work, but good is often the nemesis of great. Once an engineer has established a good status, it becomes time to be less of an engineer and more of an artist; he should strive to be great, rather than just more good.