Tacit artisanal savoir-faire, experience-driven insights, trial and error, and serendipity drove many of the eighteenth-century inventions, especially in mechanical engineering and iron and coal, far more than any solid scientific base. … Experience, dexterity, imagination, and intuition created new technology more than science.

Joel Mokyr (2009). The Enlightened Economy. Britain and the Industrial Revolution. 1700-1850, p 60