I came across this sentence:
According to von Kármán, a scientist seeks to understand what is; an engineer, to create what never was.
What's the grammar of "what is" and "what never was"? The clause "what is" seems to be incomplete. For me a correct sentence would look like "according to von Kármán, a scientist seeks to understand what exists."
Are there any other sentences that use 'what is' similarly to this one?"