21世纪工程领域—重大挑战与重大挑战学者计划

• 作者: C.D. Mote Jr
• 来源期刊: 工程（英文）
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（7）
• 页码范围: 728-732,中插14-中插19
• 页数: 1页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Prologue Engineering's fundamental mission to "create for users"has served humanity, prehistoric humanity, and other life forms, such as insects,fish, birds, and mammals, unwaveringly for hundreds to millions of years. What distinguishes human engineering from the engineering of other life forms is the singular human capacity to envision a"creation for users,"then to create it and ultimately to implement it fulfilling an important"user need."Other life forms pass down engineering creations likely learned from their prede-cessors through an evolutionary process, like creating anthills, beehives, and bird nests. Their creations are learned replications of earlier experiences more than an intellectual response to new opportunities. User advancements without opening new frontiers limit advancement of a species. The life forms above are exemplars among all the user species of engineering, but only human engi-neering leads to new creations that lead to remarkably significant user advancements.