Engineering is akin to writing or painting in that it is a creative endeavor that begins in the mind’s eye and proceeds into new frontiers of thought and action, where it does not so much find as make new things. Just as the poet starts with a blank sheet of paper and the artist with a blank canvas, so the engineer today begins with a blank computer screen. Until the outlines of a design are set down, however tentatively, there can be no appeal to science or to critical analysis to judge or test the design. Scientific, rhetorical or aesthetic principles may be called on to inspire, refine and finish a design, but creative things do not come of applying the principles alone. Without the sketch of a thing or a diagram of a process, scientific facts and laws are of little use to engineers. Science may be the theater, but engineering is the action on the stage.