Thursday 22 December 2011

Tolkien on Engineering and Invention

In Tolkien’s Silmarillion he provides a backstory to The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, and talks about the demigods that form the Valar, the controllers of the world.

Here is what he has to say about the smith god Aulë:

“but the delight and pride of Aulë is in the deed of making and in the thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work.”

Doesn’t that sum up our profession, or at least how it ought to be?

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