Applied Minds: How Engineers Think by Guru Madhavan (review)

“How engineers think” has been a subject of interest to historians of technology from the beginnings of the field, and the literature this subject has spawned is not small. Most typically the question has been tackled through case studies of engineers at work, major engineering projects, or technical products. It could be argued that these case studies are one of the most important means by which the history of technology has made a contribution to engineering education, sometimes directly but more often indirectly through introductory engineering courses, programs in engineering ethics, and courses in management, design, and other key elements of the engineering curriculum. Applied Minds might be viewed as a brief compilation of some of these case studies, augmented by the author’s interviews with some practicing engineers. As such, it may be considered a useful, accessible work, of value to engineering students and to practitioners interested in insights on their own profession.

The author seeks to entertain his readers with engineering stories while at the same time getting them to consider some larger issues. There is a bit of formula for most chapters—a story of some sort of problem or project, followed by an account of an engineer’s path to solving it. So we encounter a range of challenges: preventing fraud at marathons, managing the traffic in a large city, devising means of dispensing cash at banks outside of business hours, developing alternatives to washing diapers, and so forth. In these and many other cases, we are invited to see how engineers came up with solutions. Ostensibly, as we do this we are led through various thought processes that characterize the work of (successful and inventive) engineers. This is largely entertaining and sometimes insightful. At the very least, it is useful to have a compilation of stories of successful engineering, drawing on a variety of challenges and disciplines. The stories illustrate some important aspects of engineering thinking: “solutions under constraints,” “prototyping,” “standardizing with flexibility,” and so forth. Other general works on engineering have come up with similar lists, and this has some pedagogical value.

At times, Guru Madhavan does depart from this formulaic approach. The most charming part of the book recounts his visits to the Indian holy city of Varanasi, where he explores connections between the religious devotion and practices around which the city revolves and some of the engineering challenges (most prominently restoring and maintaining the health of the Ganges River) that the city must confront and overcome. At other times, the author’s enthusiasm runs away with him a bit. This is most evident in his final chapter, devoted to an account of some of the work of the great Hollywood director Alfred Hitchcock. Madhavan describes him as “a British engineer” and attempts to couch Hitchcock’s creativity in engineering terms. A quick check of biographical sources reveals that Hitchcock spent a year of pre-college education at a technical school in London and subsequently worked as a draftsman—hardly what we would expect to call “a British engineer.”

This hints at one of the problems of Madhavan’s approach—he never explains what he really means by an “engineer,” except to suggest that they are “integrators,” engaged in “systematic problem-solving” (both of these terms come from quotations, of which there are very, very many in this book). Otherwise, we are left to surmise that engineers are essentially people who call themselves engineers—except in cases such as Hitchcock’s, when they are people who have brushed up closely enough to engineers that we can call them that even when they do not. The analytical rigor that we are led to believe is part of engineering thinking is not part of this book.

On a more positive note, many readers of this journal will enjoy the substantial “Sources and Resources” chapter, as it draws heavily on historical case studies and is a nice snapshot of the kinds of historical works that influence and inform those with questions about...