Page "Exploratory engineering" Paragraph 4

Exploratory engineering has its critics, who dismiss the activity as mere armchair speculation, albeit with computer assist.

A boundary which would take exploratory engineering out of the realm of mere speculation and define it as a realistic design activity is often indiscernible to such critics, and at the same time is often inexpressible by the proponents of exploratory engineering.

While both critics and proponents often agree that much of the highly detailed simulation effort in the field may never result in a physical device, the dichotomy between the two groups is exemplified by the situation in which proponents of molecular nanotechnology contend that many complicated molecular machinery designs will be realizable after an unspecified " assembler breakthrough " envisioned by K. Eric Drexler, while critics contend that this attitude embodies wishful thinking equivalent to that in the famous Sidney Harris cartoon ( ISBN 0-913232-39-4 ) " And then a miracle occurs " published in the American Scientist magazine.

In summary the critics contend that a hypothetical model which is both self-consistent and consistent with the laws of science concerning its operation, in the absence of a path to build the device modeled, provides no evidence that the desired device can be built.

Proponents contend that there are so many potential ways to build the desired device that surely at least one of those ways will not display a critical flaw preventing the device from being built.