Engineering and Philosophy: Has their Conversation Come of Age?

Engineering and Philosophy: Has their Conversation Come of Age?

The panel aims to further a conversation between being advanced by a forthcoming volume, Engineering, Social Science, and the Humanities: Has Their Conversation Come of Age? (Eds. Christensen, Buch, Conlon, Didier, Mitcham, Murphy). The panel will present the work of five contributors to the book with commentary by a sixth, all exploring perspectives and approaches from which scholarship and research on engineering have been carried out. Following the Delphic injunction to know thyself, we reflect upon how the conversation between engineering and philosophy took shape, while projecting forward on ways in which we can enrich both disciplines. The contributions to the panel explore whether we still encounter failures in the dialogue between the two disciplines in the education (Martin) and professionalization (Buch) of engineers, how the engagement between philosophers and engineers can be of mutual benefit in founding a new academic field (Didier), and what central issues would need our attention in future research,
considering an existential scale (Mitcham) or through the lens of a specific topic (Guchet). To accompany us in this self-reflective journey, the panel benefits from the presence of Michefelder (coeditor of the new Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Engineering), as a discussant of each paper, who will shed light on the blind spots and opportunities for developing a research agenda and furthering the collaboration between philosophy and engineering.

Individual presenters (10 minutes each):

Diana Adela Martin (TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands / TU Dublin, Ireland): The two cultures of engineering education

The characteristics of engineering culture were first cast by C.P. Snow in opposition to those representative of the humanities. This distinction overlaps with a 200 year old hierarchisation of sciences, according to which natural sciences are at the top of the hierarchy, and social sciences are found at the bottom (Cole, 1983; Budd 1988). Despite the diffusion of different hierarchies of sciences, they all shared a similar intuition according to which some fields of research, indicated as “harder”, are more rigorous than other fields, described as “softer” (Fanelli 2010). The valorisation of the “hard” over the “soft” found its way in engineering education, which is built on technical prioritization and
disengagement from ethical and societal concerns. In this presentation, I explore how the dichotomy between “hard” and “soft” subjects is perpetuated in engineering education, focusing on the Irish context. For this, I draw on a study that includes 23 Engineering programmes in Ireland, which reveals how the status of ethics as a “soft” and “non-essential” subject is made manifest at individual and programme level.

Anders Buch (VIA University College, Denmark): The need for a recovery of engineering

In this chapter I argue that engineering is, if any, the relevant discipline to mediate, revitalize, and transform the conversation between the sciences and the social sciences and humanities (SSH). However, to do so engineering must fundamentally be recovered, rethought and reconstructed as a practical endeavor that aims to solve problems –it must not be construed as a discipline of applied science (or applied SSH for that matter).I propose that John Dewey’s critique of the nature/culture split, and his attempt to reconstruct philosophy along pragmatist, historicist, and naturalist ideas that stress the fundamental primacy of practical endeavors embodies the ethos of the engineering mindset. In reconsidering the role of engineering as a problem-solving discipline that seeks to ameliorate living conditions it can serve as an ideal platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration between the natural sciences and SSH. I argue that a pragmatist recovery of engineering lends us hope, that in the future engineering might serve as a discipline that will truly bring the conversation between science and SSH of age.

Christelle Didier (University of Lille, France): Carl Mitcham, Lille and the emergence of engineering ethics in France

Lille, and more precisely The Catholic University of Lille, is one place in France where engineering ethics started to develop in the 90s. Although this field of academic interest couldn’t be said to have had a great deal of success within the French context, especially if compared with the Netherlands, it has nevertheless made a significant contribution. But this story would not have been the same without Carl Mitcham’s interest for and support given to the little team of scholars gathered by Bertrand Hériard Dubreuil from 1994 on. In 1991, back to Lille after a Master Degree in the US, Hériard Dubreuil taught courses in a completely new topic for France whose mere translation was problematic: “engineering ethics”. Carl Mitcham and him met in 1992, in Lyon, and from this meeting many international collaborations occurred (until this panel today), contributing to build bridges between a handful of European scholars from various backgrounds, discipline and countries, interested in engineering culture and scholar from US first, then from all over the world. Although this panel would not exist without the tremendous energy of Steen Christensen, who made visible this community through the many volumes he edited, it would also not exist if Carl Mitcham did not give the Lille team, and myself, the courage to take engineering as a legitimate object for philosophy and SHS. Although there are places in France other than Lille where Carl Mitcham built strong and long-lasting professional relationships, such as with Daniel Cezeruelle in Bordeaux for example, this communication whishes to highlight the role that Mitcham has played in the development of engineering ethics in France, through his connection with Lille.

Carl Mitcham (Renmin University of China, China / Colorado School of Mines, USA): Globalization is Necessary but Impossible: The Existential Contradictions Engineers (and Everyone Else) are Ignoring.

A descriptive argument that globalization is both intentionally and unintentionally being created by modern engineering progress and the technical confidence of engineers is complemented by a normative argument that engineered globalization is creating existential risks that require more engineering to deal with them. Consideration is given to the distinctive 19th century emergence of English-speaking engineering and its collusions with capitalism as well as the 20th century emergence of existential risk discourse. The distinctive existential contradiction in which we find ourselves is that although objectively engineering is now critical to human well-being, it is not a way of life that is able to be either epistemically or politically by the masses and thus impossible in any approximation of a democratic regime. Neither engineers nor social scientists nor humanities scholars are paying sufficient attention to this problem in the political philosophy of engineering. Quelle chimère est-ce donc que l'homme? quelle nouveauté, quel monstre, quel chaos, quel sujet de contradiction, quel prodige! —Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Fragment 164). The human condition is laced with contradictions. This essay is an effort to describe a new one in which we now find ourselves. At this stage it is little more than aragged sketch or notes for such a description. Yet as an attempt to address acritical but too much ignored issue, perhaps it can be justified by G.K. Chesterston’s quip, that “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Xavier Guchet (UTC Compiègne, France): Tissue Engineering and the Bioconstruction of artificial Human Organs

Organ engineering kindles increasing interest amongst champions of human enhancement. It is expected that soon, the manufacturing of complex 3D bio-artificial structures will be within reach, providing new strategies for replacing, and even enhancing them. Unsurprisingly, many organ engineers claim that this promise is inconsistent and that human enhancement is not their concern. However, the intertwining of organ engineering and human enhancement has a longer history than bioengineers usually fathom. Furthermore, the question of whether organ engineering is inherently suffused with assumptions that feed the human enhancement promises may be raised - namely the Cartesian credo that the body is nothing but a mere machine. As anthropologist L. Sharp argues, “the mechanical enhancement of the human-body-in-crisis is a natural extension of scientific medicine”. The only way to make organ engineering immune to human enhancement would be to bring engineers to give up this Cartesian view: bodies are not objects but subjects capable of suffering from technology. I intend to demonstrate that merging technological design and care within organ engineering practices requires more than giving up the Cartesian definition of the body: it requires a new concept of the organ. In this respect, the antique meaning of organon (both organ and instrument) deserves scrutiny. In the end, the relevant debate around organ engineering should not be about being pro or contra human enhancement as such; it is rather about whether enhanced organs could make the individual better equipped for pursuing their own goals and values, or not.

Diane Michelfelder (Macalaster College, USA): Comments on the presentations (10 minutes) followed with general discussion (30 minutes).