Abstract
The notion of design plays a pivotal role in my characterization of technical artefacts and technical artefact kinds. In this characterization the term ‘design’ is used as a noun, as in ‘phrases like ‘the design of this engine’. However, the term ‘design’ may also be used as a verb; then it refers to the activity of designing, to a process the outcome of which is a design. Designing is a crucial phase in the making of technical artefacts. It is in this process that a design or in Thomasson’s words the largely correct substantive idea of a technical artefact kind is elaborated. Apart from designing, the making of technical artefacts also involves their actual production, that is, the physical realization of a design or the execution of a largely correct substantive idea. Again I turn to engineering practice to see how engineers conceptualize the designing of technical artefacts. They mainly characterize designing as a process of “translating” a function into a physical structure and so the same key notions that play a role in their characterization of technical artefacts reappear. The outcome of the design phase, though, is not a physical structure or a technical artefact but a technical design. Engineers often describe a technical artefact as an object that embodies or is based on a design. This calls for not only a clarification of the notion of a design but also of how this conception of a technical artefact relates to my analysis of technical artefacts presented so far. My aim in this chapter is present a view of engineering design that is very much in line with the dual-nature view of technical artefacts and to review a number of philosophical problems related to the notion of design (in both the verb and nominal sense). I start with a discussion of how engineering design relates to the physical making of technical artefacts (section IV.1) and to science (section IV.2). Thereafter I turn to an analysis of engineering design as a process of translating a function into a structure, and of how engineers model this process (IV.3). The process of translating a function into a structure is all about finding (constructing) the appropriate means for realizing a function. Therefore, means-end reasoning is of paramount importance in engineering design. Unfortunately, a philosophical/logical analysis of this kind of reasoning is still lacking (section IV.4). The next two sections focus on the nature of the output of engineering-design processes, that is, on design as a noun. First I turn to an interpretation of engineering design as the development of use-plans instead of designs for technical artefacts (IV.5). Then I analyse the meaning of the notion of a design and explore how the idea that a technical artefact is a physical object with a particular design is related to the dual-nature conception of technical artefacts (IV.6). For various reasons engineers are very much interested in formal representations of the design of a technical artefact. In contrast to the formal representation of the physical properties of a technical artefact the formal representation of its functional design features turns out to be very difficult. In order to see why, I compare the modelling of physical and technical systems and argue that this is due to the mind-dependent nature of functional design features (section IV.7). Finally, I discuss the basic assumptions underlying the traditional design paradigm and some recent developments in engineering that put the applicability of this paradigm in question (section IV.8). A brief conclusion closes this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
For an interesting discussion on the notion of homo faber, see Arendt (1958).
- 2.
For instance, Pahl and Beitz (1996, p. 1) remark that “The mental creation of a new product is the task of the design or development engineers, whereas its physical realization is the responsibility of manufacturing engineers.”
- 3.
The notion of making a technical artefact is ambiguous; it can refer to the intentional creation (designing) of an artefact with a particular function or to its actual physical/causal production (for instance involving workers in a production facility who may not know what they are producing); for an interesting discussion on these two interpretations, see Thomasson (2007); here I concentrate on making technical artefacts in the first sense.
- 4.
http://www.me.unlv.edu/Undergraduate/coursenotes/meg497/ABETdefinition.htm; accessed November 14, 2006. Note the prevalence of the technology-is-applied-science idea in this conception of engineering design: the application of scientific knowledge to engineering design is explicitly mentioned. I take it that the ‘desired needs’ referred to in this quote stands for ‘desires and needs’.
- 5.
According to Simon (1996 (1969), p. 111), however, the intellectual activity of designing material artefacts is not fundamentally different from the designing of organisational structures or procedures.
- 6.
In this chapter the term ‘function’ refers to ‘kind-proper function’.
- 7.
This is not to say that science is not a creative enterprise. In science the creative aspect is traditionally considered to reside primarily in the activity of representing some pre-existing world, not in creating that world. This traditional view of science has come under attack from social constructivist quarters (see, for instance, Barnes et al. (1996)). Hacking (1983) has also challenged this view by claiming that in experiments physical phenomena are created. For a criticism of this view and an analysis of the differences between creating physical phenomena and creating technical artefacts, see Kroes (2003).
- 8.
Note that what Dym refers to as a specification for an artefact comes close to what I have been referring to as a design of an artefact; so his notion of specification is different from the notion of specification I have been using in expressions as ‘the list of specifications.”
- 9.
This remark suggests that there is just a one-way influence from the outer to the inner environment. The design of technical artefacts, however, may also be a matter of adapting the outer to the inner environment (for instance, by adapting the behaviour of prospective users through training).
- 10.
It is the distinction between inner and outer environment that also lies at the basis of Hubka and Eder’s (1996, p. 108-114) theory of the properties of technical systems (technical artefacts).
- 11.
See also Dym and Little (2000, p. 113).
- 12.
In actual design practice most design problems concern variations on existing technical artefacts; then, at the beginning of the design process most of the content of the black box is already known.
- 13.
See, for instance, Cross (1994 (1989), Ch. 2).
- 14.
For a discussion of different forms of functional decomposition in engineering design, see Van Eck (2011).
- 15.
For a philosophical analysis of functional decomposition and its relation to the problem of making the transition from function to structure in design, see De Ridder (2007, chapter 5).
- 16.
I am not so much interested in how from a context of discovery perspective design engineers succeed in finding solutions to design problems (what kind of heuristics they use, how they deal with ill-defined problems, with uncertainty et cetera) but how from a context of justification perspective design engineers justify, when challenged, their design choices and the design solutions they come up with. What kind of reasoning do they employ then? So, my question about how they reason from function to structure is to be understood, not in a historical, but in a rational reconstruction sense (Kroes et al. 2009, p. 568-569).
- 17.
For a discussion on the ‘coherence’ of structure and function of technical artefacts, see Kroes (2006).
- 18.
For a general discussion of means-ends reasoning, see Hughes (2009).
- 19.
More precisely, tokens of event type A cause tokens of event type B etc.
- 20.
For a discussion on the nature of technological knowledge, see Houkes (2009).
- 21.
The most common form of a use-plan is a written manual; simple technical artefacts often come without a manual as the-use-plan is presumed to be known to the user and so remains implicit.
- 22.
Fehér (1993) presents an interesting thought experiment that puts this claim to the test.
- 23.
When used as a noun, the notion of design usually refers to a fabrication plan. Hubka and Eder (1996, p. ix) mention the interpretation of a design as the outward appearance and pattern of artefacts; this interpretation is not particularly of relevance to the present discussion. For a proposal of a general notion of design that covers not only technical but also biological designs and that is based on the notion of type fixation, see Krohs (2009).
- 24.
For a more extensive treatment of the issue of formally modelling functions, see Kroes (2010).
- 25.
In order to get to a full-blown formal model a formal language will have to be constructed in which V1,..Vn and R1,…Rm are defined (which I will leave out here, since that is not necessary for my purposes).
- 26.
In order to distinguish them notationally from physical properties functional properties are denoted in bold.
- 27.
In Searle’s terminology we are dealing here with epistemically objective judgments about ontologically subjective features; see Searle (1995).
- 28.
For an attempt to explicate the idea that there is a coherence relation between the structure and the function of a technical artefact, see Kroes (2006).
- 29.
Here I take hardware in the sense of also including embedded software.
- 30.
Within the field of STS-studies these systems are often referred to as heterogeneous systems; see, for instance, Bijker et al. (1987).
- 31.
See, for instance, the pre-proceedings of the Paris conference (14-18 November 2005) of the European Complex Systems Society, ECCS’05 (http://complexite.free.fr/ECCS/ ); this conference hosted satellite workshops on topics such as Engineering with Complexity and Emergence and Embracing Complexity in Design.
- 32.
Kasser and Palmer (2005) distinguish between three types of emergent properties namely undesired, serendipitous and desired; serendipitous features are described as “beneficial and desired once discovered but not part of the original specifications”.
- 33.
For a more detailed analysis of the notion of emergence and its relation to the control issue in engineering, see Kroes (2009b).
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Kroes, P. (2012). Engineering design. In: Technical Artefacts: Creations of Mind and Matter. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3940-6_5
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