Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2129061
C. Eckert, R. Hillerbrand
Although models and modeling are central to engineering design, they have received much less attention than models or modeling in the philosophy of science. This paper draws on insights from the philosophical literature on models in science to elucidate models in engineering. Many of the apparent differences are a matter of degree. Models in engineering design do not function solely as representational or more general epistemic vehicles. Rather, models are central to facilitating decision making. This seems to be less pronounced in laboratory practices for scientific research than in engineering design. In engineering, often only the designers understand and determine the relation between the model and its target system. In this, they serve as truth makers and truth keepers. This social process of design is essential to understanding the role of models and modeling from a meta perspective, but is also relevant to engineer when models are reused. A better understanding of these roles can help to illuminate the roles of models in engineering. To illustrate these points, this paper uses the design of a 3D printed kayak as an example that shows how even a fairly modest engineering design project requires the creation of a multitude of different models.
{"title":"Models in Engineering Design as Decision-Making Aids","authors":"C. Eckert, R. Hillerbrand","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2129061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2129061","url":null,"abstract":"Although models and modeling are central to engineering design, they have received much less attention than models or modeling in the philosophy of science. This paper draws on insights from the philosophical literature on models in science to elucidate models in engineering. Many of the apparent differences are a matter of degree. Models in engineering design do not function solely as representational or more general epistemic vehicles. Rather, models are central to facilitating decision making. This seems to be less pronounced in laboratory practices for scientific research than in engineering design. In engineering, often only the designers understand and determine the relation between the model and its target system. In this, they serve as truth makers and truth keepers. This social process of design is essential to understanding the role of models and modeling from a meta perspective, but is also relevant to engineer when models are reused. A better understanding of these roles can help to illuminate the roles of models in engineering. To illustrate these points, this paper uses the design of a 3D printed kayak as an example that shows how even a fairly modest engineering design project requires the creation of a multitude of different models.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"134 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44316188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2125398
M. Boon
Science education in academic engineering programs aims to equip students with scientific knowledge and academic skills to solve complex (socio-)technological problems. This article addresses the critical question of whether traditional science courses effectively prepare for this ability. It starts from the premise that scientific approaches to technological design and development require the ability to construct new scientific knowledge (e.g. scientific models) relevant and adequate to the concrete problem. My central claim is that a dominant view of science, called a physics paradigm of science, hinders the effectiveness of science courses. Next, I propose that an alternative view of science, called an engineering paradigm of science, is better suited to understanding scientific approaches in technological design and development, and to developing more effective science education. The engineering paradigm of science assumes ‘useful’ knowledge as the goal of science, and thus focuses on the construction of scientific knowledge for epistemic purposes in specific contexts such as technological design and development. The philosophy of science can contribute to a better understanding of the epistemic strategies in knowledge construction. I propose to call this domain of study the context of construction.
{"title":"How Philosophical Beliefs about Science Affect Science Education in Academic Engineering Programs: the Context of Construction","authors":"M. Boon","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2125398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2125398","url":null,"abstract":"Science education in academic engineering programs aims to equip students with scientific knowledge and academic skills to solve complex (socio-)technological problems. This article addresses the critical question of whether traditional science courses effectively prepare for this ability. It starts from the premise that scientific approaches to technological design and development require the ability to construct new scientific knowledge (e.g. scientific models) relevant and adequate to the concrete problem. My central claim is that a dominant view of science, called a physics paradigm of science, hinders the effectiveness of science courses. Next, I propose that an alternative view of science, called an engineering paradigm of science, is better suited to understanding scientific approaches in technological design and development, and to developing more effective science education. The engineering paradigm of science assumes ‘useful’ knowledge as the goal of science, and thus focuses on the construction of scientific knowledge for epistemic purposes in specific contexts such as technological design and development. The philosophy of science can contribute to a better understanding of the epistemic strategies in knowledge construction. I propose to call this domain of study the context of construction.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"109 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44664313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2124025
S. Zwart
or declar-ative knowledge; observations or outcomes of practical physical experiments; scientific laws or theories; functional descriptions; models and computational simulations, action, intervention, optimization or means-end knowledge; practical experiences of individuals and collectives; interdisciplinary problem-solving activities; stakeholders’ perspectives, etc. abstract scientific theorizing and real-world, wicked, technical problem-solving.
{"title":"Engineering Epistemology: Between Theory and Practice","authors":"S. Zwart","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2124025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2124025","url":null,"abstract":"or declar-ative knowledge; observations or outcomes of practical physical experiments; scientific laws or theories; functional descriptions; models and computational simulations, action, intervention, optimization or means-end knowledge; practical experiences of individuals and collectives; interdisciplinary problem-solving activities; stakeholders’ perspectives, etc. abstract scientific theorizing and real-world, wicked, technical problem-solving.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"79 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47924620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2126783
S. Zwart
With the introduction of large commercial industrial laboratories at the end of the nineteenth century, many types of experiments were institutionalized that do not aim at testing hypotheses. This paper builds a typology of experiments in techno-science, by analysing more than two hundred and fifty real-life technical projects. This resulted in four testing types (tests of hypotheses, of designs, of means-end knowledge, and of models or software), three determining types (developing working principles, preferred actions, and determining values of variables or relationships between variables) and one trial-and-error type of pure exploration. The typology is developed by working back and forth between thick descriptions of the experiments including their goals, and the development of six criteria of differentiation, to wit: determining versus testing; measurement scales of (in)dependent variables; intrinsic versus instrumental value of the outcomes; proximate function of the outcome; distant role of the outcome in the embedded project; the descriptive or normative character of the proximate or distant outcomes. The typology opens up inspiring methodological and philosophical research questions.
{"title":"Engineering Laboratory Experiments – a Typology","authors":"S. Zwart","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2126783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2126783","url":null,"abstract":"With the introduction of large commercial industrial laboratories at the end of the nineteenth century, many types of experiments were institutionalized that do not aim at testing hypotheses. This paper builds a typology of experiments in techno-science, by analysing more than two hundred and fifty real-life technical projects. This resulted in four testing types (tests of hypotheses, of designs, of means-end knowledge, and of models or software), three determining types (developing working principles, preferred actions, and determining values of variables or relationships between variables) and one trial-and-error type of pure exploration. The typology is developed by working back and forth between thick descriptions of the experiments including their goals, and the development of six criteria of differentiation, to wit: determining versus testing; measurement scales of (in)dependent variables; intrinsic versus instrumental value of the outcomes; proximate function of the outcome; distant role of the outcome in the embedded project; the descriptive or normative character of the proximate or distant outcomes. The typology opens up inspiring methodological and philosophical research questions.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"158 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42772419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2121213
M. Stacey, C. Eckert
The role of previous products in evolutionary engineering design is often neglected. In design discourse, references to objects provide terse expressions of complex information that cannot easily be expressed otherwise. Previous artifacts serve in conjunction with more general engineering knowledge to enable designers and design teams in engineering companies to work in ways that would be very difficult or impossible without them. They trigger the retrieval and active construction of personal knowledge, but also provide a scaffold for sharing knowledge and using it collectively. For companies, their products encapsulate and carry a significant part of the collective knowledge of the organization.
{"title":"Objects as Carriers of Engineering Knowledge","authors":"M. Stacey, C. Eckert","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2121213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2121213","url":null,"abstract":"The role of previous products in evolutionary engineering design is often neglected. In design discourse, references to objects provide terse expressions of complex information that cannot easily be expressed otherwise. Previous artifacts serve in conjunction with more general engineering knowledge to enable designers and design teams in engineering companies to work in ways that would be very difficult or impossible without them. They trigger the retrieval and active construction of personal knowledge, but also provide a scaffold for sharing knowledge and using it collectively. For companies, their products encapsulate and carry a significant part of the collective knowledge of the organization.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"87 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43124599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2063343
{"title":"Thank You to 2021 Reviewers","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2063343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2063343","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"i - i"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46153347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2047059
N. Rudenko, Irina Antoshchuk, Roman Maliushkin, L. Zemnukhova
The Soviet Union, during the late socialist period, is believed to have achieved impressive progress in making gender equality in STEM come true. The collapse of the Soviet Union and rapid transition to the market economy, accompanied by destruction of industrial production and economic decline, brought unprecedented challenges to the engineering profession. How has the post-socialist transition affected gender (dis)balance? We use rich, unique, and previously unexplored big data from a Russian-speaking social network, VKontakte, to answer this question. Our primary finding is that there have been negative gender dynamics since the late Soviet times, the gender gap has widened, and gender inequality in engineering has become more acute. Women’s presence in the profession has considerably decreased. Gender segregation, both vertical and horizontal, in higher education and at the workplace has solidified. We found minor gender discrepancies in job mobility patterns, and even slightly declining mobility since Soviet time. However, changing mobility patterns does not seem to have affected the gender imbalance positively. We find partial support for the leaky pipeline argument in higher engineering education and paid employment. We conclude that the 1990s was a period of harsh masculinization and intensifying gender inequality in engineering in Russia, and the current situation is still under the influence of these trends.
{"title":"Gender Equality Paradise Revisited: The Dynamics of Gender Disbalance in Russian Engineering from the Late Soviet Time to the 2010s","authors":"N. Rudenko, Irina Antoshchuk, Roman Maliushkin, L. Zemnukhova","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2047059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2047059","url":null,"abstract":"The Soviet Union, during the late socialist period, is believed to have achieved impressive progress in making gender equality in STEM come true. The collapse of the Soviet Union and rapid transition to the market economy, accompanied by destruction of industrial production and economic decline, brought unprecedented challenges to the engineering profession. How has the post-socialist transition affected gender (dis)balance? We use rich, unique, and previously unexplored big data from a Russian-speaking social network, VKontakte, to answer this question. Our primary finding is that there have been negative gender dynamics since the late Soviet times, the gender gap has widened, and gender inequality in engineering has become more acute. Women’s presence in the profession has considerably decreased. Gender segregation, both vertical and horizontal, in higher education and at the workplace has solidified. We found minor gender discrepancies in job mobility patterns, and even slightly declining mobility since Soviet time. However, changing mobility patterns does not seem to have affected the gender imbalance positively. We find partial support for the leaky pipeline argument in higher engineering education and paid employment. We conclude that the 1990s was a period of harsh masculinization and intensifying gender inequality in engineering in Russia, and the current situation is still under the influence of these trends.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"56 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46324618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2042002
O. Bychkova
Many Russians believe that local engineers are very creative. Historically, however, the numerous inventions created by Russian innovators have rarely ended up as commercialized products. Are Russian engineers indeed creative in comparison to their foreign colleagues? What motivations are associated with this creativity? Is such a shared conception of creativity a barrier to the nation’s development of innovations? I propose to answer these questions using interviews with Russian technopreneurs. For comparison with the Russian case, I will use another set of interviews with technopreneurs collected in three countries—South Korea, Taiwan and Finland—each of which can be characterized by different cultural contexts and level of technological development. I summarize the main findings of a collective research project, which employs Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s idea of ‘economies of worth.’ The study demonstrates that the basic mixes of ‘orders of worth’ are varied across the selected countries. In Russia, this mix includes the industrial, the inspired and the market orders; in Taiwan, the market, the industrial and the domestic; in South Korea, the industrial, the domestic and the market; and in Finland, the project-base, the industrial and the market. Focusing on detailed analysis of the worlds of justification among Russian technopreneurs, the article argues that, contrary to the Finnish, South Korean, and Taiwanese cases, creativity and inspiration, together with values of producing technologies for their own sake, are prevailing motivations for Russian engineers. That can explain obstacles in the way of successful commercialization and technological development in the country.
{"title":"Creativity vs Commercialization: Russian Engineers, Their Inspiration and Innovation Process","authors":"O. Bychkova","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2042002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2042002","url":null,"abstract":"Many Russians believe that local engineers are very creative. Historically, however, the numerous inventions created by Russian innovators have rarely ended up as commercialized products. Are Russian engineers indeed creative in comparison to their foreign colleagues? What motivations are associated with this creativity? Is such a shared conception of creativity a barrier to the nation’s development of innovations? I propose to answer these questions using interviews with Russian technopreneurs. For comparison with the Russian case, I will use another set of interviews with technopreneurs collected in three countries—South Korea, Taiwan and Finland—each of which can be characterized by different cultural contexts and level of technological development. I summarize the main findings of a collective research project, which employs Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s idea of ‘economies of worth.’ The study demonstrates that the basic mixes of ‘orders of worth’ are varied across the selected countries. In Russia, this mix includes the industrial, the inspired and the market orders; in Taiwan, the market, the industrial and the domestic; in South Korea, the industrial, the domestic and the market; and in Finland, the project-base, the industrial and the market. Focusing on detailed analysis of the worlds of justification among Russian technopreneurs, the article argues that, contrary to the Finnish, South Korean, and Taiwanese cases, creativity and inspiration, together with values of producing technologies for their own sake, are prevailing motivations for Russian engineers. That can explain obstacles in the way of successful commercialization and technological development in the country.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"34 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48329913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2042003
Héctor Gustavo Giuliano, L. Giri, F. Nicchi, W. Weyerstall, Lydia Fabiana Ferreira Aicardi, Martín Parselis, Federico Vasen
In the present work we develop some core ideas to strengthen the inclusion of humanistic knowledge in scientific and technical education sustained in the mainstream definition of engineering provided by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). In order to achieve such a goal we developed a novel formal definition of the term ‘judgment’ to enlighten the conceptual links between technical rationality and critical thinking in the context of the engineering profession. The analysis intends to overcome some obstacles still present when integrating humanities in engineering training rather than including them as a mere afterthought.
{"title":"Critical Thinking and Judgment on Engineer's Work: Its Integration in Engineering Education","authors":"Héctor Gustavo Giuliano, L. Giri, F. Nicchi, W. Weyerstall, Lydia Fabiana Ferreira Aicardi, Martín Parselis, Federico Vasen","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2042003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2042003","url":null,"abstract":"In the present work we develop some core ideas to strengthen the inclusion of humanistic knowledge in scientific and technical education sustained in the mainstream definition of engineering provided by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). In order to achieve such a goal we developed a novel formal definition of the term ‘judgment’ to enlighten the conceptual links between technical rationality and critical thinking in the context of the engineering profession. The analysis intends to overcome some obstacles still present when integrating humanities in engineering training rather than including them as a mere afterthought.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"6 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44830761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2022.2057124
Cyrus C. M. Mody
of which began—or, really, a active phase—on February resistance, logistical morale, The of this is it the various that led the to this in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Yemen, and so on—reaching back, of to the Cold War and the many ‘hot’ wars that the superpower confrontation spawned. It is well beyond my to tease out the complicated history behind Rus-sia’s invasion of its neighbor. Nor do I want to risk trivializing this war by relating it to topics that I, and this journal’s contributors, do know something about. Still, the engineering dimensions of this war both illustrate and perhaps some key engineering studies insights, and highlight some topics that our field could do more to address.
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Cyrus C. M. Mody","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2022.2057124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2022.2057124","url":null,"abstract":"of which began—or, really, a active phase—on February resistance, logistical morale, The of this is it the various that led the to this in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Yemen, and so on—reaching back, of to the Cold War and the many ‘hot’ wars that the superpower confrontation spawned. It is well beyond my to tease out the complicated history behind Rus-sia’s invasion of its neighbor. Nor do I want to risk trivializing this war by relating it to topics that I, and this journal’s contributors, do know something about. Still, the engineering dimensions of this war both illustrate and perhaps some key engineering studies insights, and highlight some topics that our field could do more to address.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"1 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46003645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}