The Engineering Project: Its Nature, Ethics, and Promise

FOUR Person

From the little that is known of premodern or ancient engineers, it appears that they had a lot in common with contemporary engineers. Both can be described as disciplined, dedicated, and single-minded. Hardly unexpected , since the modern engineering enterprise actually subsumed rather than supplanted the premodern engineering endeavor, inheriting its structures and functions but incorporating a scientiWc sensibility along with premodern methodologies. However, there are differences between premodern and modern engineers that make a difference. For one thing, the premodern engineer tended to have a practical character , whereas the modern or contemporary engineer tends to be pragmatic . This is a crucial difference. Practical engineers used what was at hand in their world to perform useful tasks. World or context was essential to their endeavors. Pragmatic engineers, on the other hand, stress proWciency of means, independent of contexts, in the achievement of their tasks. The extent to which context grounds, informs, and conditions engineers and the engineering project is key here. For a practical premodern engineer that extent was maximal, for a pragmatic modern engineer it is minimal. For another thing, premodern engineers tended to strive for effectiveness , whereas modern engineers tend to strive for efWciency. Effectiveness entails getting the job done, bringing forth the intended result, within a particular context. EfWciency entails getting the job done in an optimal fashion, ideally according to abstract mathematical measures, and ultimately without reference to context. Premodern engineers also strove for what I call fruitfulness, whereas modern engineers seek maximal productivity. Again, these terms are often conXated. But I use fruitfulness to indicate a contextualized concern to four person bring into being a unique and singular entity, like a cathedral. Productivity implies a decontextualized bringing into being of a multitude of engineered entities, like the latest, smallest, fastest personal computers. In general, then, the premodern engineer functioned in a practical, effective, fruitful manner that was necessarily grounded in contextual concerns . The modern engineer functions in a pragmatic, efWcient, productive manner that tries to elude the limitations of context as much as possible. the premodern engineering endeavor Within the premodern engineering endeavor, the methodology was largely implicit. A premodern engineer, for example, in building a house, relied on ancient truisms like the fact that a house built on a strong foundation is a house that will endure the test of time. Such a truism can be unfolded in numerous ways. Yet only certain types and forms caught on as resonating with the spirit of those times. In modern times we call these types and forms heuristics. These forms required certain building procedures and not others, typically passed down through the years via apprenticeships that honored the traditions. The patterns and procedures the premodern engineer employed were commonly shared and transmitted via an oral tradition. The know-how to execute a pattern was learned by practical experience. Even today there are trades and crafts whose skills are passed on through apprenticeships, formal and informal, where experience and instruction are combined in a way that would make sense to both the architects of the Parthenon and to Silicon Valley managers giving fresh engineering students some realworld hands-on training. In the premodern era, the patterns of how things should be done were generally not formulated in a way that permitted scrutiny or interpretation. Since actual engineering practice proceeded by intuition, heuristics, rough estimates, and design experience, engineering as process, the methodology of engineering, was backgrounded in the era of traditional engineering . Unquestionably, the explicitness of the modern engineering process contrasts with the implicitness of the premodern engineering process. As an illustration of this, today a modern engineering methodology, like one for designing a low-pass electrical Wlter that removes high frequency signals , is readily and explicitly available in texts and handbooks. 90 part ii: the premodern engineering endeavor In addition to the process, the person of the engineer in premodern times remains rather opaque. So, in fact, does the product, the engineered. Person, process, and product within the premodern engineering endeavor are all rather seen through a glass darkly. From a contemporary point of view, a look at the engineering endeavor in premodern times reveals mostly fragments of engineered products, primarily the ruins of departed civilizations. Traditional engineers of the premodern era have of course vanished, leaving only traces of their character and, here and there, their works. So, how to proceed, with process backgrounded and person and product dimly perceived? The products or...