Theme 4 of 5: Practical Wisdom – what do engineers know that others don’t?
Philosophy, Engineering and Technology
Theme 4 of 5: Practical wisdom – what do engineers know that others don’t?
Disclaimer: these short thought articles are the interpretive summary of the writer attending the forum of Philosophy, Engineering and Technology (fPET2023), please refer to the references and authors provided to authentically explore the ideas presented.
During the last day at fPET2023, Dr Zachary Pirtle presented a re-fresh of Walter Vincenti’s book published in 1990 “What engineers know and how they know it”. The back story for the publication apparently started with Nathen Rosenberg, the economist specialising in the history of technology and innovation, asking Walter what exactly engineers did. This set Walter on a 10-year path that resulted in his book to answer that very question. Walter had written his book when he was 73 years young, the accumulative wisdom of 50 years in engineering and proposes six categories of engineering knowledge:
1.??????Fundamental design concepts
2.??????Criteria and specifications
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3.??????Theoretical tools
4.??????Quantitative data
5.??????Practical considerations
6.??????Design instrumentalities
The subject of the talk was to answer the question: do these categories still hold true today? For example, the book emphasises design but does not sufficiently address the value of maintenance. Which is arguably of more significant importance. Zachary puts forward that “What is knowledge in engineering?” and “Why do we care?” as under researched questions that still need answering. Indeed, the answer to these can help us answer the next: “How do you teach new engineering students to acquire this knowledge?”
In the post-talk discussion, it was an audience member who suggested the ‘practical wisdom’ of an engineer is the combination of the engineer’s knowledge, skill and heart (a.k.a. intuition?) The audience member also added another dimension to the subject: Walter had explored “What is” or “What engineers do” however, shouldn’t we also be exploring “What ought to be” or “What engineers ought to do”? If we take Aristotle’s view that Practical Wisdom is knowing how to live well, the summation of Truth and Application, we have not ‘perfected’ engineering know-how by any stretch. It would?be interesting to see if anyone does take on the challenge of making that comparison: the practical wisdom of what is versus the theoretical wisdom of what ought to be.