That's Not How You Play The Violin!

Here's a classically trained violinist, Alex Mitchell, playing the violin in a decidedly unclassical way...





Some people spend years and years learning from the establishment so that they can emulate them exactly and perpetuate the tradition forever.

Some other people spend years and years learning from the establishment so that they can evaluate them, transcend them, and sometimes even consign the useless bits of tradition into the giant trash heap of history.

As the great non-scientist/non-engineer Tay Ping Hui once said on TV:

"Scientists ask 'Why?'. Engineers ask 'Why not?'."

Actually, scientists MUST ask "Why not?" - at the minimum, to examine alternative explanations to their pet ideas to avoid getting shot down by their peers, to say nothing of scrutinizing established theories.

And did you think engineers have the luxury of asking "Why not" if scientists never asked "Why"?

Did you think that James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Hendrik Lorentz and André-Marie Ampère were electrical engineers?

Did you think that Erwin Chargaff, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick and Jimmy Watson were biomedical engineers?

If the science stuff doesn't exist, then what would engineers engineer on?

A magic voodoo chant?

Hugh Laurie knows that playing a doctor on TV doesn't make you a doctor. Maybe Tay Ping Hui doesn't.