<p>Right now for engineering, there's the big four, right - civil, mechanical, chemical, and electrical - and the rest seem to branch off of those. What about bioengineering, though? It seems to be a fundamental discipline. Most engineering majors are based off of physics and/or chemistry. Bioengineering is based off of biology. Of course, there is environmental engineering, but that could be considered a branch of bioengineering or civil engineering.</p>
<p>biology is based on chemistry… which is based on physics… and ballgame.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>…Which is based on math</p>
<p>I’d argue that bioengineering is also based on physics, and biology is just the medium in which you work in. It’s much like CE’s working with large structures, ME’s with small structures and structures with moving parts, ChE’s with chemistry and EE’s with electricity (basically). </p>
<p>I consider BioE to be an interdisciplinary subject drawing upon concepts from ME, ChE and EE.</p>
<p>I’d throw industrial in as the fifth</p>
<p>And the point of this discussion is what? All engineering disciplines are needed by society and industry.</p>
<p>In addition, how many specialties fall under civil (structural, soil mechanics, traffic, waste water, construction, etc.) or mechanical (fluid mechanics, thermal mechanics, etc.)?</p>
<p>the thread’s just saying that most schools with smaller engineering departments (i.e. not large state schools or MIT, CalTech, the like), these four to five majors are the basic engineering majors that they’ll offer, before it starts to branch out into aero, nuclear, etc.</p>
<p>@ brown man:</p>
<p><a href=“http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png[/url]”>http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png</a></p>
![http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png[/url]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>Oh yeah, I’ve def got that printed on my wall. aha</p>
<p>Yeah the first thing that came to my mind was XKCD. :O</p>
<p>I’d say something about materials engineering, but then everyone would just tell me it’s actually ChemE and I’d get all 
and stuff.</p>
<p>:) I like the XKCD link!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No. It’s not. They are separate fundamental sciences. Mathematics is used to quantify anything and everything.</p>
<p>^ Bloody brilliant!! (Didn’t Newton create calculus for physics purposes?)</p>
<p>CS should be the fifth :D</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And Leibniz.</p>
<p>I didn’t know Leibniz was a physicist as well xD </p>
<p>(embarassssiiiinnnnng)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t really think we can classify them to one profession. I have always wondered if Leibniz or Newton considered themselves physicists or mathematicians. I feel that instead they merely saw themselves as scientists or just natural thinkers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And because physics is used to quantify physical phenomena, it is a subset of math based off of your logic. Hence it is based on math. Do you really believe Physics can exist without math? If you really think they are fundamental sciences, this is what you are claiming- that physics can exist without math.</p>
<p>Re engineering: EE, ME and CivE are by far the largest engineering disciplines. ChemE, Industrial, Materials etc. are much smaller. If you count software/CS/IT as engineering, it’s the biggest of all. (See BLS occupational outlook handbook.)</p>
<p>Re math & physics: Physics is empirical. It’s debatable whether math is empirical (see [Philosophy</a> of mathematics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics]Philosophy”>Philosophy of mathematics - Wikipedia) ). </p>
<p>Re Newton & Liebniz: I suspect that Newton and Liebniz thought of themselves as philosophers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No. That is not a corollary of my logic. Of course, physics can exist without mathematics. Qualitative analysis of the universe certainly does exist outside of quantitative analysis. Numbers and mathematics are ideas. They are used to describe systems of kinds. The laws of physics do not emanate from mathematics. That is absurd.</p>