Review of Philosophy and Engineering: An Emerging Agenda by Ibo van de Poel and David E. Goldberg: Springer, New York; 2009; ISBN: 978-90-481-2803-7; 361 pp. Price: $139.00.

At first glance, philosophy and engineering may not strike the average person—including the average philosopher or engineer—as fields that have much, if anything, in common. Perhaps this simple impression accounts for the scant attention that philosophers have generally paid to engineering and that engineers have generally paid to philosophy. However, what makes this situation a bit more puzzling than it initially appears is the considerable attention that philosophers have paid to two areas that are closely associated with engineering: science and technology. In fact, both philosophy of science and philosophy of technology are relatively well-established disciplines; the same cannot be said of philosophy of engineering.

A movement is under way to change this, and a significant milestone is the publication of Philosophy and Engineering: An Emerging Agenda, the second volume in a planned series on the Philosophy of Engineering and Technology being published by Springer under the direction of editor in chief Pieter Vermaas, a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. What makes this book especially important is the source of its contents: the first Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering (WPE), which took place in Delft in October 2007. That landmark event was followed by a second WPE in London in November 2008 and the first Forum on Philosophy, Engineering & Technology (fPET) in Golden, Colorado, in May 2010. Future WPE and fPET gatherings are anticipated.

Both WPE and fPET have adopted a similar format, incorporating three different tracks: philosophy, with abstract reviews by philosophers; ethics and other interdisciplinary considerations, with abstract reviews by a combination of philosophers and engineers; and reflections by practitioners, with abstract reviews by engineers. The book mirrors this organization and includes an introduction, nine contributions on philosophy, ten chapters on ethics, and eight examples of reflection.

Ibo van de Poel begins by recounting some of the history and motivations behind the establishment of WPE, primarily a desire to bring philosophers and engineers together in one venue to exchange ideas from their understandably different perspectives. Some of the key issues include the need for an adequate definition of engineering; the nature of the relationships among science, technology, and engineering; and the perceived importance of greater interaction and cooperation between philosophers and engineers.

Michael Davis opens the section on philosophy with an examination of the similarities and (especially) the differences between engineers and architects. He points out that the distinction cannot be found in the names or functions of the two disciplines; rather, it is grounded in the unique history and resulting self-identity that each has, which is embedded in their current educational and professional contexts. Li Bo-cong follows with an account of how philosophy of engineering has been emerging around the world over the last two decades, primarily from within the preexisting communities addressing philosophy of science and philosophy of technology. He notes that the potential benefits flow both ways: not only is philosophy important to engineering, but engineering is also important to philosophy.

Paul Durbin, a pioneer in philosophy of technology, notes that there is not a single philosophy of engineering, but rather a plurality of approaches, which he likens to the facets of a diamond. He highlights four in particular: connections to science, metaphysical critiques of the narrowness of engineering problem solving, American pragmatism, and radical criticism. Along similar lines, Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey identify six specific currents in contemporary philosophy that can serve as starting points for a philosophy of engineering: phenomenology, postmodernism, analytic philosophy, linguistic philosophy, pragmatism, and Thomism. They elaborate on the kinds of questions and answers that a linguistic philosophy of engineering might explore.

Pieter Vermaas discusses the problematic status of philosophical research on the conceptual, methodological, and epistemological questions posed by engineering, using his own work on the analysis of technical functions of artifacts as an example. He found that the “ICE theory” that he and others developed is likely to be of limited use to engineers; the conceptual precision that is essential in philosophical discourse does not have the same value in engineering practice and may even be perceived as detrimental. Joseph Pitt seeks to invert the widespread perception that engineering is applied science; in fact, “contemporary science cannot be conducted until some serious engineering is already in place.” Scientific research requires a preexisting technological infrastructure—funding agencies, buildings, instruments, etc.—which in turn require engineers for their realization.

Marc de Vries focuses on two forms of generalization: abstraction, which is “abstaining from certain aspects of reality in order to get a deeper understanding of the remaining aspect(s)”; and idealization, which is “replacing a complicated detail of reality by a simplified version of that detail.” He presents four case studies to illustrate the fundamental distinction between the two, which he characterizes thus: “Abstraction does not change the description of reality but only limits it; idealization describes reality in a (slightly) different way than it is.” Zachary Pirtle goes on to advocate the study of models and modeling in engineering practice, noting that engineers use a variety of different kinds of models in order to understand and engage with the world. He cites Walter Vincenti’s examples of flush riveting and control volume analysis, as well as recent forensic assessments of levee failures during Hurricane Katrina.

Maarten Ottens concludes the first section of the book by analyzing the concept of a boundary and calling attention to an important limitation on the application of a systems engineering methodology to the design and management of sociotechnical systems, such as electric power delivery. Such an approach necessarily excludes certain elements from its conceptual representation of a system that are, in reality, essential for the functioning of the system but cannot be incorporated.

Alastair Gunn provides the first contribution on ethics, in which he explores the notion of integrity and its relevance in identifying the ethical responsibilities of engineers. After an overview of how engineers generally perceive themselves and are perceived by society, he surveys various definitions of integrity and concludes, “For professionals, this ideal means that their professional and personal values and behaviour coincide.” Richard Bowen subsequently outlines what he calls “an aspirational engineering ethic”—one that prioritizes helping people, rather than technical ingenuity for its own sake. In contrast to the common tendency to focus on ethical dilemmas, he advocates “the adoption of a positive way of living” that embodies virtues grounded in the context of a particular practice and embedded within its educational institutions, professional associations, and industry and work activities.

Heinz Luegenbiehl points out that much of the work that has been done in engineering ethics follows a model originally developed in the United States, which consequently incorporates some uniquely American or Western features. He argues for pursuing a more global approach, ideally without any cultural presuppositions, by treating engineers as a worldwide community with a shared set of values that can serve as the basis for specific foundational principles. Christelle Didier notes that in some countries, such as France, the concept of a profession does not have the ethical dimension that is often presupposed elsewhere. With this in mind, she identifies some specific characteristics of human actions on which engineering ethics typically focuses and addresses the legitimacy, knowledge, and power of engineers accordingly.

Mark Coeckelbergh suggests that the usual approach to moral responsibility is inadequate in a context like engineering that involves multiple agents, rather than a single individual, and unavoidable uncertainty, rather than complete information. He recommends the use of what he calls “moral imagination” to envision the potential consequences of our activities for future generations and let ourselves be affected by them. Auke Pols offers a theoretical framework for the transfer of responsibility for artifacts from engineers to users by means of “use plans,” which commonly take the form of a manual, instructions, pictures or icons, or even the configuration of the artifact itself. The key factor is “guidance control,” which involves an agent freely performing an action for which the agent has the necessary physical and/or mental ability.

Wade Robison shifts attention to the solution of design problems, which he calls the “intellectual core of engineering,” and advocates the principle, “Benign by design!” He challenges the self-perception of engineers who think that what they do is entirely clear and quantifiable and who thus resist the intrusion of “qualitative, vague, subjective, and contentious” considerations, such as ethics. Merle de Kreuk, Ibo van de Poel, Sjoerd Zwart, and Mark van Loosdrecht present the results of an ethical parallel study that was carried out during the development of a new technology for wastewater treatment. They reflect on the influence of their work on the innovation itself and on the proper role of ethicists who participate in such research in light of the potential tensions between them and the engineers.

Otto Kroesen and Sybrand van der Zwaag raise the need for teaching ethics to engineering students and describe two role-playing games that have been used for this purpose at the Delft University of Technology. The objective is to incorporate both technical and nontechnical factors that can influence engineering decisions, including modeling discrepancies, public pressure, financial considerations, and group dynamics. Finally, Peter Danielson presents results from scenario-based surveys and empirically sound experiments intended to “stress test” ethical decision making and assumptions that social science and philosophy bring to applied ethics. Although implemented initially in the field of biotechnology, the approach “is designed to generalize to any controversial issue with significant technical content.”

David Goldberg launches the last section of the book by speculating on reasons why the time has finally come for philosophers and engineers to take serious interest in each other’s work. He suggests that the engineering community is currently experiencing a “crisis” as the paradigm that was in place during World War II and the cold war is proving “unsuitable to the demands of a postmodern creative age.” Natasha McCarthy observes that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had a background in engineering and proceeds to apply some of his later insights to his earlier area of study. She then proposes that a philosophy of engineering may be able to help overcome traditional philosophical problems like Cartesian doubt and the pessimistic induction.

Joel Moses discusses common design methodologies and relates them to their philosophical roots; for example, tree structures reflect the organization that Aristotle recommended for administering Greek city-states, while layered hierarchies resemble the “just society” envisioned by Plato. These correspond to top-down and platform-based architectures in systems engineering, while network-based architectures are suggestive of Darwinian evolution. Russ Abbott contrasts the abstractions that are the focus of computer science with the approximations of physical reality that are essential to engineering. What they have in common is the objective of “turning an idea into reality,” and the bit—which is both an immaterial value (true/false) and a part of the material world—is an example of where they can overlap.

Taft Broome explores the metaphysics of engineering, stating that “learned works of engineering are different from those in the sciences and the humanities” because they “are non-systematic . . . but nonetheless believable.” He claims that engineering methods simulate those of mathematics and science in the real world but are also set in “the hyperreal world known as the assigned world in which engineering employs no simulations.” Albrecht Fritsche employs the framework of determinacy and indeterminacy, casting technology as an “effort to avoid effort” and the engineer as a problem solver whose first and most important task is to understand the problem. He writes, “Technology as determinacy is established on a background of indeterminacy; and the actor who does this is the one we call engineer.”

Billy Koen recapitulates his thesis that the engineering method is the use of heuristics, which can be generalized as the universal method with specific application to the long-term survival of humanity. He emphasizes his definition of the state of the art as the combination of all heuristics that are available to an individual, group, society, or species as a whole, showing that it is just as applicable to science and philosophy as it is to engineering. In the last chapter, Gene Moriarty introduces the notion of “focal engineering” in light of two different German words for experience: Erlebnis for “firsthand immediate experience” and Erfahrung for “reflective, mediated, secondhand experience.” Both play a role in the ethical assessment of engineering in terms of person, process, and product.

Perhaps because of the relative maturity of philosophy of technology, much of the initial work in philosophy of engineering has tended to focus on the branches that have products as their output, rather than projects. As a result, civil engineering is comparatively underrepresented so far. Also conspicuously absent from this volume are contributions from full-time engineering practitioners—all but one of the authors hold academic positions.

Hopefully these imbalances will be at least partially rectified in the near future. The Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of ASCE has recently established an ad hoc Engineering Philosophy Committee with the mission of exploring and expounding the philosophical foundations and implications of the structural engineering profession. Three papers prepared by committee members were accepted for presentation at fPET, for which the committee itself served as a nonfinancial cosponsor. If successful, the committee’s scope will likely be expanded eventually to encompass the full range of civil engineering practice.

In the meantime, this book should serve as an excellent starting point for anyone interested in finding out what the professions of philosophy and engineering have to say to one another and how they might be able to enhance each other. Engineers, in particular, should pay attention; doing so may provide opportunities to gain important insights that can shape the future direction of engineering education and practice for the better.

For more information about WPE, fPET, or the SEI Engineering Philosophy Committee, please contact the author of this review.