[littlestymaar]

> Maybe it's because for instance there were exactly zero engineers working with radio waves before Maxwell and Hertz

Well, humans have been crafting optical lens way before Maxwell ;). And even way before [1] Descartes and Newton decided to study light.

For everything out of reach of our senses, like the examples you gave, we need formal science. But for everything humans can see, smell or touch, we're pretty good with empirical observations : chemistry, fluide dynamics, genetics and mechanics where comonly used way before formal science was even a thing.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud_lens