Abstract
Engineering has long been treated with condescension in Western culture and this continues today even among those intellectuals who have discovered the cultural significance of science and, very recently, of technology. In a complementary essay to this one, I describe technology as a social process to which engineering contributes, but which is driven by institution-specific executive decisions that apply technical knowledge selectively to the accomplishment of managerial agendas.1 The practice of engineering, I argue there, is captive to social determinants of this process such that the definition of engineering problems, the determination of the means to be used in solving them, and the identification of what will count as solutions, all derive from the institutional context of engineering’s practice, not from the knowledge engineers possess, and certainly not from Nature.
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References
Steven L. Goldman, ’The Social Captivity of Engineering, in P. Durbin, ed., Critical Perspectives on Non-Academic Science and Engineering (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, forthcoming).
See, for example, Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), esp. pp. 289ff on the reversal of the order of priority of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa in the modern age; George Ovitt, The Restoration of Perfection: Labor and Technology in Medieval Culture (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987 ), chapter 4: “The Mechanical Arts in the Order of Knowledge,” pp. 107-136; Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump ( Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985 ).
In Richard Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Descartes ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979 ), p. 5.
Yves Gingrich and Sylvan S. Schweber of Andrew’s Pickering’s (1986) Interpretation of quantum chromodynamics as a socially constructed theory (see note below); and in P. Davies and J. Brown, Eds, The ghost in the atom Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press.
See the excellent discussion of the diesel engine’s transformation from idea to commercial product in Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 103-144. Also the discussion of the intentionality of engineering in Steven L. Goldman, “The Techne of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Technology,” in P. Durbin, ed., Research in Philosophy and Technology, volume 7 ( Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1984 ), pp. 130 - 134.
Robert Perucci and Joel E. Gerstl, Profession Without Community (New York: Random House, 1969), and Edwin T. Layton, “Engineering and Science as Distinct Activities,” in J. Burnet, ed., Technology and Science: Important Distinctions for Liberal Arts Colleges ( Davidson, North Carolina: Davidson College, 1984 ).
For an overview of the Strong Program, see the introductory essay to Karin Knorr- Cetina and Michael Mulkay, Eds., Science Observed (London: Sage, 1983), pp. 1–18. For illustrations, see Harry Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (London: Sage, 1985); Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1984 ); and Thomas Pickering, Constructing Quarks ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986 ).
Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 1975); Eugene Ferguson, “The Mind’s Eye: Non-Verbal Thought in Technology and Science,” Science 197 (26 August, 1977): 827-836; Thomas P. Hughes, “Model Builders and Instrument Makers,” Science in Context 2 (Spring 1988):59-75; Brooke Hindle, Emulation and Invention (New York: Norton, 1983); Otto Mayr, ed., Philosophers and Machines (New York: Science History Publications, 1976), introduction; Anthony Wallace, Rockdale (New York: Knopf, 1978). Edwin Layton sums up the point perfectly: “From the point of view of modern science, design is nothing, but from the point of view of engineering, design is everything,” in “American Ideologies of Science and Engineering,” Technology and Culture 17 (1976); see also Layton, “Science and Engineering Design,” in Bridge to the Future ( New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1984 ).
According to Edgerton, Ferguson, and Hindle. See previous note.
According to Ferguson, “The scientific approach to engineering is systematic, but intellectually impoverished,” “The Mind’s Eye,” p. 833. That this was a source of concern earlier than the immediate past, see W. L. Everitt, “The Phoenix-Challenge to Engineering Education,” in Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineer¬ing Education (1944):321-328; there Everitt argues that the engineering curriculum no longer teaches engineering because of its abstract and analytical character; also, J. H. Hollomon, Future Directions for Engineering Education (Washington, D.C.: American Society for Engineering Education, 1975), especially pp. 47-48, where Holloman cites the need for reintroducing “the art of engineering” into the engineer¬ing curriculum from which it has been squeezed out by basic science courses.
George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things ( New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962 ).
Billy V. Koen, “Towards a Definition of the Engineering Method,” in The Bent (of Tau Beta Pi) 76 (Spring 1985 ): 28–33. This is amplified in Koen’s Definition of the Engineering Method ( Washington, D.C.: American Society for Engineering Educa¬tion, 1985 ).
Layton, “Science and Engineering Design” (note 8, above), p. 59.
Hindle, Emulation and Invention (note 8, above), pp. 133 and 137.
A primary objective of engineering education today must be “an understanding of social and economic forces and their relationship with engineering systems, including the idea that the best technical solution may not be feasible when viewed in its social, political, or legal context.” See Edward T. Cranach, Engineering Undergraduate Education (Washington D.C.: National Academy of Engineering Press, 1986), p. 10.
An Excellent illustration of this point in contained in an article in science 244 (June 30, 1989):1532-1534, comoparing the aircraft control systems of the Airbus Industrie A320 and the McDonell Douglas MS-II passenger planes. After reviewing the contrasting designphilosophies embodied in these control systems, M. Mitchell Waldrop writes: So, who’s right? Maybe everybody. It’s a cliché that ebgibeering is an art, but it is. And it’s perfectly possible for Airbus, McDonnell Douglas, and all the rest to come up with very different solutions to the problem of aircraft automation, and still be perfectly correct.
Approximately 80% of U.S. engineers are employed in private industry, with large concentrations in a small number of corporations. For a discussion and references, see Goldman, “The Social Captivity of Engineering” (note 1, above).
Latour, Science in Action (note 5, above).
Herbert A. Simon, ’The Logic of Heuristic Decision-Making, in his Models of Discovery (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977 ), pp. 154—178; also, The Sciences of the Artificial ( Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969 ).
For a description of the impact of conflicting institutional agendas on the development and regulation of nuclear power in California, see Richard A. Meehan, The Atom and the Fault ( Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985 ).
Latour, Science in Action (note 5, above); see also Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other,” Social Studies of Science 14 (1984): 399 - 341.
Latour, Science in Action; Jerome R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), especially pp. 31-68 and 321-363.
Pickering, Constructing Quarks (note 7, above), pp. 180-195; but see also the review-critique of the book by Gingras and Schweber (note 4, above), for an objectivist response.
For example, Thomas Hughes writes that Nikola Tesla’s “idealized images stimulated his creative endeavors. If the image did not coincide with the reality, he endeavored to reorganize the real so that it would approximate his ideal”; Networks of Power ( Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986 ), p. 115.
Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper, 1977). On the ways that artifacts express the willfulness they embody, see Thomas H. von Laue, “Technology, Society and Freedom,” Technology in Society 5 (1983).
Goldman, “The Techne of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Technology” (note 5, above), pp. 136-139; also, “On the Incommensurability of Science and Religion,” Working Papers Series, volume 1 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Technology Studies Resource Center, Lehigh University, 1984 ), pp. 1 - 24.
Soren Kierkegaard in an entry for 1843 in his Journals: Selected and Revised Edition ( London: Oxford University Press, 1938 ), p. 127.
Moses Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 2,17.
David Marsh, The Quattrocento Dialogue: A Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980 ), pp. 1 - 23.
Ibid., pp. 24-37.
Paul Goodman, The New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative ( New York: Random House, 1970 ), pp. 3 - 23.
Nathan Reingold, “Vannevar Bush’s New Deal for Research: Or, the Triumph of the Old Order,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 17, part 2 (1987):299-344. See also George Wise, “Science and Tech,” Osiris, second series (1985), volume 1, pp. 229 - 246.
The National Academy of Engineering is itself some ninety years younger than the National Academy of Science.
Cecelia Tichi, Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987 ), p. 98.
Ibid., pp. 99f; see also Steven L. Goldman, “Images of Technology in Popular Film,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 14 (Summer 1989 ): 275 - 301.
The reconceptualization of objectivity in the 1960s seems to me a fundamental cultural development, one cognate with the mass anti-establishment movements of the period: civil rights, consumer activism, environmental ism, alternative life styles, opposition to nuclear power, to the Vietnam War, to multinational corporations, to the military and intelligence communities, and to science and technology. The shift from so-called internalist to externalist history of science and technology, the promotion of non-Western and non-rational modes of knowing, and the revival of relativism and subjectivism are symptomatic of this development, as was the rise of science, technology, and society (STS) studies.
Steven L. Goldman, “On the Interpretation of Symbols and the Christian Origins of Modern Science,” Journal of Religion 62 (1982):1—21; also, “From Love to Gravity: Renaissance Magical Nature Philosophy and the Origins of Modern Science,” an unpublished paper available from the author.
Lawrence P. Grayson, “A Brief History of Engineering Education in the United States,” Journal of Engineering Education 67 (December 1977):246-264. Also, Steven L. Goldman, “The History of Engineering Education: Perennial Issues in the Supply and Training of Talent,” a report prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment, NTIS #PB 88-177 951/AS.
Goldman, “History of Engineering Education,” especially the bibliography.
The historical priority of technology vis-à-vis science has been central to Lewis Mumford’s critique of technology, from Technics and Civilization (1934) to The Myth of The Machine (1967/1970).
Among these are the intensification of secularism and materialism as expressed in the art, philosophy, political theory, and economic policies of the period.
Grayson, “Brief History” (note 38, above), especially his many references.
See, for example, Hugh G. J. Aitken, Syntony and Spark: The Origins of Radio (New York: Wiley, 1976 ), and The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio 1900-1932 ( Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985 ).
On scientists as engineers, see Lillian Hoddeson, ’The First Large-Scale Applica¬tion of Superconductivity: The Fermilab Energy Doubler, 1972-1983, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 18, part 1 (1987). Also, Joan Lisa Bromberg, “Engineering Knowledge in the Laser Field,” Technology and Culture 27 (October 1986).
Layton, “Science and Engineering Design” (note 8, above).
See the discussion of U.S. industrial competitiveness in Part III of Goldman, “History of Engineering Education” (note 38, above).
Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge (note 22, above), especially chapter 2, “Social Problems of Industrialized Science,” pp. 31-68.
Ibid.; also Pinch and Bijker (note 21, above) and Latour (note 5, above). See also David Dickson, The New Politics of Science ( New York: Pantheon, 1984 ).
Edwin T. Layton, Jr ., “American Ideologies of Science and Engineering,” Technology and Culture 17 (1976)
J. Merton England, A Patron for Pure Science: The National Science Foundations Formative Years, 1945-1957 (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1982 ), and Milton Rowan, “Politics and Pure Research: The Origins of the National Science Foundation, 1942-1954” (doctoral dissertation, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 1985 ).
See, for example, Lewis M. Branscomb, “Engineering and the National Science Foundation,” Science 224 (27 Aprii, 1984 ).
Cited in Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform ( New York: Vintage, 1955 ), p. 262.
Sheldon Krimsky seems to apply to the public a stricter standard of knowledgeability as a condition for participation in technology policy decisions than to policy makers themselves in his essay, “Epistemic Considerations on the Value of Folk-Wisdom in Science and Technology,” Policy Studies Review 3 (February 1984): 246 - 261.
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kommt darauf an, sie zu veranderen; Karl Marx, Werke, Band 3 ( Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1954 ), p. 7.
For example, Robert S. Morison, “Visions,” in A. Teich, ed., Technology and Man’s Future ( New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981 ), pp. 7 - 22.
Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, 1934), pp. 36Iff.
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Goldman, S.L. (1990). Philosophy, Engineering, and Western culture. In: Durbin, P.T. (eds) Broad and Narrow Interpretations of Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy and Technology, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0557-3_10
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