Your posts brings up a point I've brought up here before, namely, why scientists as a rule are political liberals, while engineers tend to be conservatives. There are many exceptions on both sides, of course, but I do feel this to be the case, and I think I know why.

In spite of the fact these two groups have similar aptitudes and interests, and their curricula of study and even their professional lives tend to overlap a great deal, there are fundamental psychological differences between the two. At the risk of over-generalizing, here is how I perceive the dichotomy.

The scientist loves nature and wants to know how it works. To him, the universe is perceived as an esthetic, even spiritual force. Psychologically, he resembles the philosopher, artist, or the religious mystic. He seeks truth and beauty. For him, politics is merely the administrative scaffolding we are forced to construct in order to live together in groups.

The engineer, on the other hand, sees nature as only the setting on which he creates and develops his own personal and social ambitions. He perceives it simply as the "given", more of an obstacle to be overcome in order to build a useful or esthetic structure. Engineers are less interested in how something works than in getting it to work. Psychologically, he resembles the businessman, lawyer, or politician.
He seeks utility and value. For him, politics is simply freedom from restraint and shelter from chaos, because he assumes the rest of the world is just like him (or should be!), and if left to their own devices, everything and everyone will turn out all right.

Both groups do have one thing in common. They tend to believe they have unlocked the key to understanding reality. The scientist believes he has uncovered the perfect objective philosophy that must inevitably lead to the truth of the world. He mistrusts all philosophies but his own, while conveniently forgetting that perfectly competent scientists very often disagree bitterly on interpretations of data. The engineer, on the other hand, seems to believe the only truth of validity is whether or not his creations function as they were designed, while conveniently forgetting that the true worth of any device is how well it serves us, not how well it works.

Both of them tend to forget that the one form of human thought they both honor and agree on, mathematics, is purely a product of the mind, independent of reality or physics. Mathematics, the "man-made universe", appears to permeate nature, but it is independent of it. We didn't develop geometry or calculus by going out and taking measurements and devising and testing theories. Maths are strictly products of the human imagination, and if we tend to think of nature mathematically it is only because without its aid nature is totally incomprehensible. We impose mathematical order on nature, that is, the reality we perceive is entirely a reflection of our internal psychological processes. And THAT is the same error of judgement made by the theologians of the Middle Ages when they convinced themselves they had discovered the key to eternal truth.

No, I am not claiming scientific method is equivalent to theological speculation. I was trained as a scientist, I respect that tradition, and I reject religious explanations as subjective and unfounded. I just have gotten to the point in my life where I understand how important it is to apply the same skepticism to what I believe to be true as I do to that which I am convinced is false.