I wonder what your definition of “science” or “engineering” is…
Similarly a kid playing with the dose of water needed to build a sandcastle isn't a civil engineer nor an environmental researcher. Maybe on LinkedIn though.
One way to "engage" these internal representations is to include keywords or patterns of text that make that latent knowledge more likely to "activate". Say, if you want to ask about palm trees, include a paragraph talking about a species of a palm tree (no matter whether it contains any information pertaining to the actual query, so long it's "thematically" right) to make a higher quality completion more likely.
It might not be the actual truth or what's going on inside the model. But it works quite consistently when applied to prompt engineering, and produces visibly improved results.
This sums up pretty nicely why prompt hacking is not science. A scientific theory is related in a concrete way to the mechanism by which the phenomenon being studied works.
But prompt engineering is still a pressure point for some people, despite being wildly more simple and accessible (literally tell the thing to do a thing, and if it doesn't do the thing right, reword)
It feels as though we're getting to the technological equivalent of "what IS art anyways", and questions like if non traditional forms like video games are art (I'm thinking all the way up the chain to even say, Madden games)
And in my experience, when something is under constant questioning of whether or not it even counts as X, Y or Z, it usually can technically qualify, but...
If people are constantly debating whether or not it's even X, it's probably just not impressing people who don't engage in it, as opposed to "traditional" concepts of engineering and art, and part of the impression made comes from the investment and irreplaceable skillsets, things few, if anyone else at the time could have done.
This is why taping a banana on the wall is definitely technically art, but not many outside the art community that tapes bananas to walls really think much of it. It's so mundane and accessible a feat that it doesn't garner much merit to passerbys. It's art by the loosest technical definition, and is giving a lot of credit for a small amount of effort anyone could've done.
Admittedly "prompt engineering" is definitely less accessible than a roll of duct tape and a banana but I think we used to just call it "writing/communication", but I guess those who feel capable at that, often just do it manually anyways.
"Trust the science"
In reality, that is about the furthest from what you should do. As Feynman once said: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts". Electricity was also once considered a toy and good for nothing but parlor tricks.