Abstract
This chapter points out some differences between engineers and architects in curriculum, standards of evaluation, and allied fields, provides an historical account of the origins of those differences (emphasizing the last three hundred years), and reflects on the method that makes the differences so clear and alternative methods of study that might make them appear much less so (a focus on discipline, occupation, and profession rather than function). The conclusion is that we must be careful to identify what method we use to study engineering, since the choice of method is often also the choice of conclusion (or, at least, the ruling out of some promising alternatives).
“All is water.”—Thales
“All is air.”—Anaximenes
“None of the other things either is like any other.”—Anaxagoras
“Those, then, who say the universe is one and posit one kind of thing as matter, and as corporeal matter which has spatial magnitude, evidently go astray in many ways.”—Aristotle, Metaphysics Bk.I. Pt. 8
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Notes
- 1.
The confusion is even greater when the term is “marine engineer”. Some marine engineers are a kind of licensed mariner (those who operate and maintain the mechanical systems of modern ships) – while others practice a branch of engineering called “marine engineering” (the subject of which is the design of those same mechanical systems).
- 2.
Applied physics (sometimes called “engineering physics”) is another of these misnamed fields; it is not physics but engineering. “Rocket science” would be another – if the term ever appeared anywhere but in (something like) the humorous observation, “It’s not rocket science”.
- 3.
This might have worked. Only five years before, the American Medical Association was founded with an equally inclusive ideal, admitting surgeons as well as physicians (who, by history and training, were then at least as distinct from physicians as architects were from engineers). The AMA’s inclusiveness was not unlimited, however. It declined to admit dentists (who, in those days, would have been oral surgeons). The admission of surgeons to the AMA was successful (as the admission of architects to the ASCE was not). The exclusion of dentists was also successful. They remain a separate profession.
- 4.
The claim that the École Polytechnique is the mother of all modern engineering schools, especially the great number of 19th century schools that put “polytechic” in their name, is, I think, uncontroversial. But that claim is consistent with another, the claim of several schools of the ancien régime seem to have developed the curriculum the École Polytechnique made famous. History has few bright lines. Most are a device of historians trying to put what they know in a form short enough to be useful.
- 5.
Non-engineers are unlikely to appreciate how central calculus is to the training of engineers. The four courses in calculus are only a part of the story. The rest of the story is three years of engineering courses in which students regularly use calculus to solve problems. Few architecture classes – and none of the core – use calculus at all.
- 6.
Architecture is also a discipline that relies on “precedent”, generally following modes of design and construction that have proved their reliability. In this respect, architecture resembles engineering. Engineers hate to “reinvent the wheel” (as they often put it). That, however, is a different point from the one I am making here. While architecture is history-based, architects are, in some respects at least, less attached to precedent than engineers are. For examples, architects love to “reinvent the house”.
- 7.
I am, of course, talking about public presentations or the major presentation that “sells” the design. Architects are quite capable of discussing cost, safety, and efficiency – and regularly do it when dealing with technical issues of design. My point is simply that such considerations do not have as prominent a place in their discipline as they have in engineering.
- 8.
In my experience, this is the dominant form of presentation. It is certainly not the only one. For example, some architects present themselves as craftsmen (rather than artists), emphasizing durability and comfort over beauty; some, as “social engineers” (changing the way people live and think); and so on. This variety suggests the variety of things any architect must actually do in the course of a single design. Engineers also have ways of presenting themselves other than as “applied scientists”, but there are fewer of them – and they are different. The most common are, I think, businessman, manager, and inventor.
- 9.
Early “architects”, for example, the proto-architects of the Renaissance, often did work on fortifications. But the point here is that, despite this early history, architecture today is (and for at least three centuries has been) “an art of peace”. That it was not always so simply suggests the importance of history in defining architecture as a discipline, a point I shall come back to.
- 10.
Oddly, Vitruvius’ use of “architecture” (rather than the Latin synonym) may itself have been a revival, a word choice signaling that he wanted to bring back Greek styles at a time when the Romans were developing their own. Vitruvius’ revival 1500 years after he first published is almost an accident. Only one copy of his book survived the dark ages. One copy less and “architect” might not have been our word for the builder of classical buildings. We might instead have had the architectural equivalent of “engineer” (or the Italian word, “artificer”).
- 11.
Compare Vasari 1963, 151: “Rule in architecture is the measurement of antiques, following the plans of ancient buildings in making modern ones.”
- 12.
For two less well-know “architect-engineers” of about the same time, see Vasari 1941, 211–221, Guilano and Antonio da S. Gallo, both trained in “wood-carving and perspective”.
- 13.
Cuff (1991) and Draper (2000). The first of these American schools was MIT (1865). By 1900, there were eight more: Cornell (1871); Illinois (1872); Syracuse (1874); Columbia (1881); Pennsylvania (1890); George Washington (1894); Armour Institute, later IIT (1895); Harvard (1895). The University of Michigan’s opened a school of architecture in 1876 but closed it two years later. (Parenthetical date is date when a distinct department or complete four-program was established.) Weatherhead 1941, 33–62 and 90–108.
- 14.
See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal (October 11, 2007): “The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices, both as surveyors and as engineers – there were no civil engineers in the United States at the time. James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, who laid out the route were both judges who had gained experience in surveying as part of settling boundary disputes.” Both Geddes and Wright seem to have been frontiersmen with, at best, a primary-school education (though Geddes did briefly teach school in his native Kentucky before leaving for upper New York State). Those who worked under the two judges (such as Canvass White or Nathan Roberts) were at the time also at best “amateur engineers” – without formal training in engineering and, indeed, generally without any advanced education at all – and almost no experience of any sort of canal building, much less of a canal so large as the Erie. Building the Erie Canal was a school for a whole generation of canal builders, the last before civil engineers took over canal building in the United States.
References
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to Kevin Harrington for catching many small errors in my description of architects – and for more than two decades helping me learn about them.
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Davis, M. (2009). Distinguishing Architects from Engineers: A Pilot Study in Differences Between Engineers and Other Technologists. In: Poel, I., Goldberg, D. (eds) Philosophy and Engineering:. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2804-4_2
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