Anything Everything

Most parents in India, especially in Kerala prefer to restrict the career preferences of their children to two options – Engineer or Doctor. These two are the most widely preferred career options now. Though, they both are considered equally respectable, a doctor gets more consideration from the general public and is treated with reverence. But, an engineer is just an engineer! This is partly due to the fact that, engineers outnumber doctors. Also, a doctor can save a valuable human life, while an engineer is incapable of doing so.

But, what bothers me is the attitude of the general public, who treats a mechanic as God, and God as a mechanic!

What does a doctor do? He helps people sustain life in their bodies by repairing their bodies, that are damaged by various internal or external factors.

What does an engineer do? He designs and develops new systems that are capable of doing improved tasks or improves the existing systems to cope with the current situations.

What does a mechanic do? He repairs the existing machinery, so that it can be used again without abandoning it as scrap.

And, God is the master designer, who designed and created the universe and all the living and non-living things in it.

From these above statements, we can be deduce the similarities between the doings of God and an engineer. Also, we can see how similar are the works of a doctor and a mechanic. But still, nobody accepts this. Repairing a living body of a man is not the work of a mechanic, it is that of God. Designing and creating new non-living technologies is the work of a mechanic, and not of God. Why?

Life is very, very important. That's the reason. That's the only reason. A machinery like a computer is quite similar to human brain in some aspects. If the processor is damaged due to a sudden voltage surge, the whole computer is dead. But, replacing the damaged one with a new one solves the problem and breathes new life into the machine. But a sudden surge in blood pressure can lead to hemorrhage in the brain which results in the death of a man. But, the dead man can't be brought to life by replacing the brain. That's the speciality of biological life. Once, there occurs a break in it's flow, then we can't do anything to resume it!

A burnt out fuse and a damaged kidney are not identical. Engineers do create new things, while doctors just repair existing stuff. But, the common man doesn't need the inside stories and the difficulties faced by an engineer while he develops a new technology. They just see a brilliant doctor rescuing a man in critical situation, with his skills and experience. For them, the stethoscope is a magic wand, that can make anything possible.

Developing a new system requires many sleepless nights and tons of brilliance put together. A designer must think of every possible situation the new system may face and must include all necessary safety features in it. And there lies the biggest difference. An engineer knows all about the system he has developed. He knows how it will react in a particular situation. Even if there arises a problem that he couldn't predict, he can identify it's cause and fix that bug.

But, no one knows everything about human body and mind. A doctor can't say for sure, if a surgery will correct a problem. He says there is a chance for failure. He knows, human body is unpredictable. He can't state a thing with 100% certainty.

There are flaws and accidents in the systems developed by man, that is known to him. But, engineers have two cases for everything he develops – an ideal case and a practical case. We know 100% about the ideal case, but we know only 99.99% of the practical case. This small percentage of ignorance can attribute to all those unfortunate incidents.

Ideally, 99.99% knowledge is not complete knowledge. But practically, it is complete knowledge.