The Rise of Engineering Science

This chapter traces the changing relationships that have existed between science and technology during the modern era. For much of this period science and technology existed independent of one another, separated by different intellectual and social traditions. In response to new intellectual, economic and social developments technology became dependent upon science during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But this new relationship resulted in something more than technology becoming simply applied science. The development of what became known as engineering science acted as an intermediary form of knowledge that served as a translator between science and technology. In doing so engineering science transformed technology into a scientific discipline but one that was a “mirror-image” of traditional science.

This chapter analyzes how the new conceptual, methodological, and ideological transformation of science the emerged during the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provided an intellectual foundation for the development of engineering science during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter focuses on the role of Galileo, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton in creating a new conceptual framework for science by formulating a mechanical philosophy, a new methodology of science by formulating an experimental philosophy and establishing a new ideology of science that argued that scientific knowledge was practical, useful and a source of political power.

This chapter analyzes how the social and economic changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries helped to create a need for engineering science. The chapter describes how the development of cheap sources of iron, the development of the steam engine and the revolution in textile manufacturing combined to create what has come to be called the Industrial Revolution. While most of these developments had little dependence upon science, the chapter argues that with the development of new large-scale technologies, such as iron bridges, steam engines, railroads, steamboats and new factories engineers could no longer rely on traditional techniques such as rule-of-thumb or cut-and-try empiricism and had to rely more and more on scientific ideas and methods. While science could be of some use in solving the problems of large-scale technology the chapter concludes by arguing that much of traditional science was of little use in understanding actual machines and structures and that a new engineering science was required to address these problems.

This chapter traces the development of new areas of knowledge that would later be seen to comprise engineering science. Topics covered in this chapter include: the history of applied mechanics, which includes the strength of materials, theories of elasticity, and theories of mechanisms and machines; the history of fluid mechanics, which includes the study of waterwheels, turbines, naval architecture, ballistics and aeronautics; and the history of thermodynamics.

This chapter analyzes how a number of key individuals at universities, polytechnics, and Technische Hochschulen helped to formally establish engineering science as a new intermediate mode of knowledge that existed between science and technology and between theory and practice and helped to establish an ideology for engineering science based on the idea of a harmony of theory and practice. The chapter focuses on the role of W. J. M. Rankine at Glasgow University, Ferdinand Redtenbacher at the Polytechnische Schule at Karlsruhe, Franz Reuleaux at what would become the Technische Hochschule at Charlottenburg, Gaspard Monge at the École polytechnique, Arthur-Jules Morin at the Conservatoire des arts et métiers, and Robert Henry Thurston at Cornell University. The chapter concludes by arguing that formal establishment of engineering science in Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States began to transform technology into a scientific discipline. But this scientific discipline was not simply applied science. It had its own framework that included new concepts that combined elements of science and technology, such as stress, strain, coefficient of friction, modulus of machines, efficiency, wave-line and streamline. In addition, engineering science developed some of its own methodologies, such as descriptive geometry, parameter variation, and graphical analysis.

This chapter traces how a combination of theory and practice led to the development of the steel industry. It then shows how the availability of steel led to new building techniques that required the use of engineering science. The chapter focuses on the design and building of the Eads Bridge in St. Louis, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and the skyscrapers in Chicago.

This chapter analyzes how new knowledge of thermodynamics led to improved sources of power such as the internal combustion engine, the four cycle engine and the Diesel engine. The chapter focuses on the work of Étienne Lenoir in France, Nikolaus Otto in Germany, Alphonse-Eugène Beau de Rochas in France, and Rudolf Diesel in Germany.

This chapter describes how the new internal combustion engines led to new systems of transportation, such as the automobile industry and the aviation industry. The chapter focuses on the work of Wilhelm Maybach, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz in Germany and Henry Ford in the United States in the development of the automobile. The chapter also discusses how developments in the engineering science of fluid dynamics led to the invention of the airplane. The chapter focuses on the work of Otto Lilienthal in Germany, Samuel Pierpont Langley, and the Wright brothers in the United States.

This chapter traces how the development of the automobile industry led to new methods of production. It analyzes how Henry Ford and a team of engineers at the Ford Motor Company developed the idea of Mass Production by combining the idea of interchangeable parts and the idea of the moving assembly line. The chapter also discusses how Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s idea of Scientific Management combined with Ford’s idea of Mass Production to create a new method of production based on scientific principles, such as time-and-motion studies and industrial psychology.

This chapter argues that the development of engineering science which transformed technology by establishing a new interdependent relationship between science and technology was only the first step in the emergence of an even more radical transformation of the relationship between science and technology that would begin to occur in the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter argues that while technology became more similar to science during the eighteenth and nineteenth century during the twentieth century science became more similar to technology. This has resulted in erasing the boundaries between science and technology and the emergence of what some have called technoscience. The chapter concludes by arguing that the history of the rise of engineering science plays an important role in understanding technoscience.