first-principles engineering
nounA way of building things by starting from the most basic facts and figuring everything out yourself.
Using first-principles engineering, the team redesigned the battery from scratch instead of copying old designs.
OTHER MEANINGS
2. An engineering method that breaks a problem down to its most basic truths before building a solution.
First-principles engineering helped them cut costs by questioning every assumption about the motor.
3. A mindset of ignoring conventional designs and deriving new ones from fundamental science.
Her first-principles engineering mindset led to a completely new kind of wing shape.
4. The practice of solving technical problems by reasoning upward from basic laws rather than analogy.
The startup's success came from first-principles engineering rather than copying competitors.