- 1.0 A New Product Development Paradigm
- 1.1 Computational Engineering and Virtual Prototypes
- 1.2 Computational Science and Digital Surrogates
- 1.3 The Computational Engineering and Science Ecosystem
- 1.4 High-Performance Computers: The Enablers
- 1.5 Full-Featured Virtual Prototypes
- 1.6 The Advantages of Virtual Prototyping for Systems of Systems
- 1.7 Virtual Prototyping: A Successful Product Development and Scientific Research Paradigm
- 1.8 Historical Perspective
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
1.8 Historical Perspective
The computer-driven leap in our ability to predict the future has its roots in a realization by Greek natural philosophers in the late 7th and early 6th century BCE: The physical world might not be controlled by the capricious whims of gods and spirits (see Figure 1.9). Greek natural philosophers began searching for an underlying order in nature—for natural and universal laws that relate cause to effect, to explain the physical universe instead of relying on mythology and religion (Barnes 1965, Parkes 1959, and Pollitt 1972). The next era of advances in science and engineering began during the Italian Renaissance in Italy (15th and 16th centuries), partly through the rediscovery of ancient Greek science and mathematics via the Islamic states in Spain and the Near East. The Age of Discovery, which began in the 16th century and lasted into the 19th century, saw further advances, such as the invention of the calculus to explain motion. The Age of Discovery was followed by the scientific and mathematical advances of the 17th and 18th centuries in Northern Europe, and the scientific revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America.
)
Figure 1.9 Greek Gods and mythological beasts populated the heavens in 700 BCE (matrioshka/Shutterstock)
With modern supercomputers and the appropriate software, humankind now has the ability to design and accurately predict the future performance of new products, as well as the future behavior of natural systems. Like those just cited, starting with the Greeks, this is a historic advance in our ability to develop new and exciting technologies and to better understand our world and the universe quantitatively. Some technology leaders place the advent of advanced computing as part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab 2016). It is our view that what has happened is far more significant. Computational engineering now allows accurate predictions of the future performance and behavior of some of the most complex products ever conceived—before they are built. Computational science gives us the capability to ask and answer fundamental questions about natural phenomena such as the weather, the climate, and the structure, history, and future of the universe that we could not address before now.