The Six Ways We See

The vision thing. What is it? A vivid mental image. The ability to see. The perceptual experience of seeing. A product of the imagination - the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not presented to the senses. A mystical experience. Vision - the most important of all the senses for an engineer. The six ways engineers see the world:

1. We see objects - the who and the what.
2. We see quantities - the how many and how much.
3. We see position in space - the where.
4. We see position in time - the when.
5. We see influence and cause and effect - the how.
6. We see all of this come together and "know" something about our environment - the why.

The vision thing is important to engineering. It goes to the heart of the Buddhist masters concept of vision - right view, right intentions, right action. If you're not seeing the world properly, if you don't get the vision thing, you have little hope of any sort of productive insight or important discovery.