"Academic physics" describes reality. It is the closest thing to an accurate description of reality that we have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_physics

Quote: "A physical theory is a model of physical events. It is judged by the extent to which its predictions agree with empirical observations."

Read the above carefully. What it says in essence is that a physical theory is judged by the degree to which it agrees with reality. Our best physical theories agree with reality to ten decimal places.

Physical theory is a statement about reality. If reality disagrees, the theory is thrown out and replaced by a better one.

> It is trivial to say engineering knowledge is derived from reality, and it's wrong to say it's derived/derivable from purely theoretical/academic knowledge of physics ...

Engineering is applied science. Any engineering field for which this is not true has no right to exist, and doesn't deserve the public's trust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_science

Quote: "Applied science is typically engineering, which develops technology, although there might be feedback between basic science and applied science: research and development (R&D)."

> Engineering is a corpus of knowledge that has been slowly and with great difficulty hewed from the raw rock of real experience over hundreds of years. It is not just a branch of math derivable from axioms.

False, and you need to learn this topic. I hope you're not an engineer.

> Show some respect.

By correctly identifying engineering as applied science, I did. There is no higher praise than to say -- correctly -- that engineering is derived from scientific principles, from physics.