"There probably is more truth in a single experiment, scientific paper, construction project, surgical procedure, or circuit board than might be found in a thousand tedious poems or essays; which probably explains why good science and engineering has so many repeat customers."
Maybe.
But not in good poems and essays.
There are far more important and profound truths to be found in the writings of Aristotle, Aquinas and Shakespeare, than in any bridge construction project, says this formally trained engineer.
Furthermore, the natural sciences are based on a philosophical system outside the scope of what we call “science.”
Finally, it was the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church (specifically, the dogma of “creation from nothing”), that birthed science in the West.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/science_origin.html
Speaking of “tedious” I don’t know if I’m the only engineering student who found it droll that in the calculus of the thermodynamics of engines, one literally speaks of T*dS work. (Temperature on absolute scale multiplied by differential increment in entropy.) Did someone come up with S to stand for entropy just to produce that pun???