Well the word itself was coined in 1857 by a Polish scholar. In Greek "ergo" means "work" and "nomos" translates to "laws". So ergonomics is literally the "laws of work." In our modern day context ergonomics has been described as "Fitting the job to the person!" or "Work smarter - not harder!" Reasonable definitions. Here is another way to think about it. Take a ball and throw it into the air. What happens?
Correct! the ball comes back down. Why? (Obvious question, feel free to give the obvious answer!) Gravity works! In fact, if it didn't come back down, we would be quite surprised! As we understand the laws of gravity, when we stand on the face of the earth and throw a ball into the air, it will come back down. In other words the CIRCUMSTANCES PREDICT THE RESPONSE. Now, imagine we DON’T want the ball to come back down. What do we need to do? How about throw the ball up and just tell it to stay in the air . . . "BALL - STAY UP!!" Everyone will agree this is LUDICROUS. You can’t get a ball to stay in the air just by telling it to. Rather you need to change something . . . attach Velcro to it, throw it into a net, attach it to a string, launch yourself into outer space . . . you get the picture! How does this relate to what ergonomics is all about? |