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Taking Stock of Engineering Epistemology: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

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Abstract

How engineers know, and act on that knowledge, has a profound impact on society. Consequently, the analysis of engineering knowledge is one of the central challenges for the philosophy of engineering. In this article, we present a thematic multidisciplinary conceptual survey of engineering epistemology and identify key areas of research that are still to be comprehensively investigated. Themes are organized based on a survey of engineering epistemology including research from history, sociology, philosophy, design theory, and engineering itself. Five major interrelated themes are identified: the relationship between scientific and engineering knowledge, engineering knowledge as a distinct field of study, the social epistemology of engineering, the relationship between engineering knowledge and its products, and the cognitive aspects of engineering knowledge. We discuss areas of potential future research that are underdeveloped or “undone.”

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Notes

  1. For a historical overview of the philosophy of engineering and technology, see Brey (2010)

  2. See Christensen et al. (2015b) for a similar perspective.

  3. The interaction has been widely discussed and still remains in a state of flux (Niiniluoto 2016; Radder 2009; Pedersen 2015; Hansson 2015, 2016; Forman 2007). The science engineering (and technology) is a historical relationship and its present state can be found by considering its growth trajectory. For example, in American engineering, see the following for a historical treatment of engineers and their ways in comprehending and contesting the science-engineering divide: Belanger (1998), Kline and Lassman (2015), Kline (1987, 2000), Akera and Seely (2015), and Seely (1993, 2013).

  4. Given the social nature of engineering knowledge, discussed later, we may want to add to this another kind of knowledge: group knowledge. It is beyond the scope of this article to address the notion of group knowledge in any detail. An overview can be found in Schmid et al. (2011).

  5. It is not the purpose of this paper to detail this discussion in full. For more on knowledge how/that and its relation to technological knowledge how, see Hetherington (2015), Houkes (2006), and Norström (2011, 2015). For more on a traditional discussion of technological knowledge, see Cupani (2006), de Vries (2003, 2006), and Meijers and de Vries (2012).

  6. The challenge of interpretation is one of the biggest problems in archeology.

  7. For more extensive discussion on the metaphysics of artifact kinds see, e.g., Franssen et al. (2013), Margolis and Laurence (2007), and Vaccari (2013).

  8. It is very difficult to present a clear-cut difference between the natural and the artificial. With the growth of new biological devices and advances in biological engineering, the natural and artificial is even further blurred. However, in some cases, for ease of discussion, it is possible to make demarcations. The examples presented here are used to show the difference between natural and engineered systems.

  9. Related to this is the question of whether there is such a thing as technological explanation (Pitt 2000, Ch. 4, 2009).

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Acknowledgements

Vivek Kant would like to thank his teacher and mentor Scott Campbell for his encouragements towards adressing the science-engineering relationship.

Funding

Eric Kerr’s work on the project benefited from the financial support of a Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 2 grant entitled “Governing Compound Disasters in Urbanising Asia” (MOE2014-T2-1-017).

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  1. Industrial Design Centre (IDC School of Design), Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, Maharashtra, India

    Vivek Kant

  2. Asia Research Institute, AS8, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Eric Kerr

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Kant, V., Kerr, E. Taking Stock of Engineering Epistemology: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Philos. Technol. 32, 685–726 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-018-0331-5

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