"This may hurt," she said seriously, "but you are not as different as you might think."
"He hates the thought of practicality."
"And yet," said Elaine, "if all were engineers who would take time to seek out the little-known facts?"
"And," snorted Tom, "if all were physicists, we would still be hanging from trees, tossing coconuts at one another whilst a few bright dawn-men were contemplating the possibilities of using fire—but, of course, doing nothing about it. After all, once the physicist has considered all the angles, he's through. He doesn't give a howling hoot whether what he's considered is practical—after all, it is interesting and that's all he cares about."
"But—"
"Since the physicist's thinking is actually based upon past proof—made by practical engineers—the contemplation of fire would be as far as they'd get. For there would be no engineer to ever use it to show its practical possibilities! That's based on my horribly hypothetical world where all were physicists and none were engineers."
"Who invented the bow and arrow?" asked Elaine.
"Ab, Ug, or Unguh. He, she, or it was an experimenter. Y'see, Elaine, at one time there were neither engineers nor physicists. Alexander Graham Bell was not—in our present day sense—a physicist nor was Morse, or Edison or Lodge. Nor were they engineers. Somewhere since then the line has been divided. In them days they were basement geniuses. But now," he said bitterly, "there is one set of people who think up cockeyed things and another set that figures out what to do with them."
"Y'know," smiled Elaine, "I think that getting together would be the finest thing that ever happened to you and the physicist."
Tom backed up three steps. "Look," he snapped, "I've heard a lot. I can stand for a lot. But that's something that I can't even consider."