Abstract
This paper describes several examples of recent practices in systems engineering and aerospace engineering research and development of interest to the philosophy of technology community. These examples include cases in which philosophical and social concepts and practices are (or can be) used in engineering, cases in which engineers use philosophical strategies (often without realizing it), and cases that philosophers have investigated and found of interest in the past.
Engineers implicitly use some philosophical practices. Rhetorical ploys are quite common. One common practice is to change key terms to distinguish one engineering approach or practice from another. This is often used to attempt to influence a discipline or acquire funding. Quantification is a key form of engineering rhetoric. Attempts to create engineering disciplines, establish an engineering organization, or win an argument about a design or operational method can succeed or fail depending on the ability to generate and present quantitative results.
There are several cases in which philosophical and social concepts have been implicitly or explicitly used in engineering. One important example is the growing importance of “goals” in the engineering of autonomous systems. Autonomous systems are designed with “intelligence” to enable them to change goals based on changes in the external environment or internal health. These goal-based approaches are inherently teleological. Another case of interest is the use of concepts of social communication and cognitive limitation, which are core principles in the newly forming discipline of system health management, and in the older field of systems engineering. Engineers are also developing axiomatic and model-based approaches to systems engineering disciplines.
Finally, philosophers using hermeneutical and pragmatic approaches argue that active engagement with the world profoundly influences the way in which individuals understand and interact with the world. I argue that both engineering and philosophy have this in common, and that using these approaches is useful to understand the nature of both.
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Notes
- 1.
Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- 2.
Patrick A. Heelan and Jay Schulkin, “Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science”, in Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek, eds., Philosophy of Technology, The Technological Condition, An Anthology, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 138–153, originally from Synthese 115 (1998): 262–302.
- 3.
Ronald N. Giere, Science without Laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
- 4.
It may be helpful to understand some of my background and biases. I have a bachelor’s degree in physics and a PhD in the History of Science and Technology, with strong supporting programs in philosophy of science, economic history, and European history. I worked in aerospace engineering from 1980 to 1995 and from 2005 to the present, and in academia as a regular tenure-track faculty member from 1997 to 2005. I have worked for large companies, in academia as regular and as research faculty, as a civil servant, and running my own business. I have worked as a civil servant on torpedoes for the Navy and launch vehicles for NASA. My experience includes working for large companies on target drones, as manager of a digital-analog simulation laboratory, engineering of deep space probes, and as researcher in Vehicle Health Management. I have worked in academia teaching space management, economics, and history, doing research on System Health Management and systems engineering for NASA, the Army, and Missile Defense Agency. I have my own small business, which includes work for NASA on launchers, and as a consultant on system health management and commercial diagnostic tools. I am the author of two books on the origins of systems engineering and project management (one is The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs), general editor for System Health Management: with Aerospace Applications and the two volume space history encyclopedia Space Exploration and Humanity: A Historical Encyclopedia, and many papers and books in space history, space-related political economy, system health management, and systems engineering.
- 5.
Henry Petroski, Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
- 6.
The first paper that I have found using the term ‘reliability’ was from 1950, from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville Alabama, addressing mathematical prediction of missile failure rates, or conversely, success rates.
- 7.
Stephen B. Johnson, Thomas J. Gormley, Seth S. Kessler, Charles D. Mott, Ann Patterson-Hine, Karl M. Reichard, Philip A. Scandura, Jr., eds. System Health Management: With Aerospace Applications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
- 8.
Bruno Latour, Science in Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
- 9.
Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
- 10.
Stephen B. Johnson, Sudipto Ghoshal, Deepak Haste, and Craig Moore, “Fault Management Metrics,” 2017 AIAA Science and Technology Forum, Grapevine, Texas, 9–13 January 2017.
- 11.
An example of this quantification is described in Yunnhon Lo, Stephen B. Johnson, and Jonathan Breckenridge, “Application of Fault Management Theory to the Quantitative Selection of a Launch Vehicle Abort Trigger Suite,” IEEE 2014 Prognostics and Health Management Conference, Spokane, Washington, June 2014, Paper ID 3225693.
- 12.
Stephen B. Johnson, “The Theory of System Health Management”, in Stephen B. Johnson, Thomas J. Gormley, Seth S. Kessler, Charles Mott, Ann Patterson-Hine, Karl M. Reichard, Philip A. Scandura, Jr., eds. System Health Management: With Aerospace Applications (Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley United Kingdom, July 2011), Chapter 1, pp. 3–27.
- 13.
Stephen B. Johnson, Goal-Function Tree Modeling for Systems Engineering and Fault Management. AIAA Infotech@Aerospace (I@A) Conference, 2013, Boston, MA. August 19–22. AIAA Paper 2013–4576.
- 14.
Erik Hollnagel, David D. Woods, Nancy Leveson, eds., Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2006.
- 15.
On the origins of systems engineering and systems management, see Stephen B. Johnson, The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
- 16.
Stephen B. Johnson, and John C. Day. “Theoretical Foundations for the Discipline of Systems Engineering”, AIAA Infotech Conference, 4–8 January 2016, San Diego, California, AIAA-2016-0212.
- 17.
Howard E. McCurdy, Faster Better Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
- 18.
Ronald N. Giere, Science without Laws, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
- 19.
On the importance of communication technologies and processes for bureaucracies, see JoAnne Yates, Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
- 20.
Stephen B. Johnson, “The Representations and Practices of the Discipline of Systems Engineering”, Conference on Systems Engineering Research, 22–24 March 2016, Huntsville, Alabama.
- 21.
Mike Watson, Michael Griffin, Phillip A. Farrington, Laird Burns, Wes Colley, Paul Collopy, John Doty, Stephen B. Johnson, Richard Malak, Joey Shelton, Zoe Szenfarber, Dawn Utley, Maria Yang, “Building a Path to Elegant Design”, Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Management International Annual Conference 2014, October 15–18, 2014, Virginia Beach, VA, S. Long, E-H Ng, and C. Downing, eds.
- 22.
Patrick A. Heelan and Jay Schulkin, “Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science”, in Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek, eds., Philosophy of Technology, The Technological Condition, An Anthology, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 138–153, originally from Synthese 115 (1998): 262–302.
- 23.
Stephen B. Johnson, “The Theory of System Health Management”, in Stephen B. Johnson et al., eds., System Health Management: with Aerospace Applications, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2011, pp. 1–26.
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Johnson, S.B. (2021). Philosophical Observations and Applications in Systems and Aerospace Engineering. In: Pirtle, Z., Tomblin, D., Madhavan, G. (eds) Engineering and Philosophy. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 37. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70099-7_4
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