Engineering is both a professional practice and an academic field (but really, an overlapping set of sub-categories within both of these). And none of these categories agree on what it even is. This article suggests it is something like “implementing things that work by following previously successful models”. And I think that is close to how many practicing engineers and the public, and even some academics such as the one quoted here, think of it. To be fair, the person quoted is talking about how historical engineering methods often predated the scientific theories that could explain why they worked.

The article actually suggests that engineering is somewhat disconnected from science. I happen to think this is wrong in the modern context, or at best a small part of what the relationship between modern science and modern engineering is or should be. The definition I prefer is something like “applying science to understand systems, how their component parts determine their behavior, and how they interact with conditions at their boundaries in time and space.”