Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science,but their form and function,their dimensions and appearance,were determined by technologists,artisans,designers,inventors,and engineers &mdash using nonscientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptionsthey are dealt with in the mind by a visual,nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology,it has been nonverbal thinking,by and large,that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings. Pyramids,cathedrals,and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics,but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them.

许多日常使用的事物明显受到了科学的影响，但它们的形状和功能，它们的大小和外观，是由工艺人员、工匠、设计师、发明家和工程师运用非科学思维模式来设计的。工艺人员所考虑物体的很多性质和特点不能归结到毫不模糊的字面描述在思维中，它们以一种视觉上的、非言语的方式被加以处理。在西方科技的发展过程中，大体上是由非言语思维刻画了我们物质环境的轮廓并充实了其中的细节。金字塔、大教堂、火箭之所以存在，不是因为几何学或热力学的原因，而是因为在它们的制造者的头脑中事先存在了这样一幅画面。

The creative shaping process of a technologist''s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example,in designing a diesel engine,a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should be valves be placed? Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience,by physical requirements,by limitations of available space,and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions such as wall thickness and pin diameter,may depend on scientific calculations,but the nonscientific component of design remains primary.

在几乎每一件现存的人造制品身上都能看出工艺人员思维创造性的制作过程。比如说，在柴油发动机的设计中，过不断使用关于合适感和适当感的直观体会，一个工艺人员得以用他个人的非语言思维来影响到机器本身。燃烧室的形状应怎样?阀门应该放在哪里?它应该有个长的活塞还是应该有个短的?这样的问题有着由经验、物理需要、可用空间的局限以及并非微不足道的形状感等因素提供的一系列答案。某一些决定，比如壁厚和销钉直径，可能需要由科学的计算来定夺，但设计中的非科学成分仍然是主要的。

Design courses,then,should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking,a central mechanism in engineering design,involves perceptions,the stock-in-trade of the artist,not the scientist. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail hard thinking， nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering,the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students,but rather students attending architectural schools.

因此设计课程应该成为工程课程中的基本成份。非语言思维，这一工程设计的重要机制，包括了感受这一属于艺术家的而非科学家的惯用手段。因为人们认为感受的过程不需要“硬思维”，非语言思维被视为认知过程发展的一个原始阶段而且比语言和数学思维差。但令人感到自相矛盾的是，当《美国工程历史名录》的工作人员希望得到为其美国工程历史记录而绘制的机器图和等比例图时，具有所需技能的大学生不是工程学大学生，而是就读于建筑学院的大学生。

If courses in design,which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving,are not provided,we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems. For example,early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivial aberrationsthey are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a problem in mathematics.

如果不能开设设计课程(它能在一个高度分析性工程学课程体系中提供解决实际问题的背景知识)，我们就会在先进的工程系统中遇到愚蠢而同时会导致极大损失的错误。比如，装载了精密控制设备的早期高速铁路车辆模型不能在暴风雪中正常运行，原因是一个风扇将雪吸入到电子系统中。干扰着自动控制系统的荒唐的随机故障不是轻微的失常它们是一种混乱的反映，人们认为这种混乱主要在设计数学方面的问题时就会产生。

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