Worldviews
Philosophy time! Is there an objective reality? How much knowledge can we have about this objective reality if it exists? If there is no objective reality, then how do we say what is true or not? These are certainly philosophical questions, but often, especially in STEM, those philosophical questions are left to the philosophers. And maybe it's bigger than STEM. I've often experienced that describing a conversation as "philosophical" means that it is unintelligible, unimportant, nitpicky or impractical. But I do think these questions are important, and their answers have practical consequences for STEM. As engineers, we would like to make engineering decisions and develop engineering designs based on things that are true. All decisions require an understanding of the truth (as well as a set of priorities and constraints). And we design something because we think that there is truth to that something's form or function. It does what we think it does. It communi