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ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 85 Engineering as a Method for Solving Problems Engineers take pride in ''getting the job done.'' They feel they are particularly well equipped for the tasks they undertake because they bring to them the principles of analysis and problem resolution they learned while studying to become engineers. These principles are commonly referred to as "the engineering method" and they are usually learned in classes devoted to engineering design. Eugene Ferguson, reflecting on his own experience as an engineering student, recalled being taught that "the first thing you do in design is to draw a circle around the system under consideration in order to define the boundaries and control whatever may cross them." He also pointed out that this approach to design, which presumes that the system under examination can be successfully isolated and controlled, was first developed by Italian military engineers in the sixteenth century. Whereas their predecessors had designed fortresses that incorporated whatever advantages were offered by the local landscape, the sixteenth-century Italian engineers argued for a more abstract approach. Favoring a purely geometric and symmetric design to one that embodied local features, they argued that the ideal fortress would be located on an open plain. The surrounding territory was to be stripped of any structures that might give aid to an attacking force, a stipulation that was captured by the pithy phrase of a seventeenth-century French general, "suburbs are fatal to fortresses." Fortress design was still being taught on these principles at West Point as late as 1860, and the more general" engineering method" embodied in this approach to design continued to inform engineering education up to the very recent past. Ferguson's story may be taken as a challenge to reexamine what we mean when we speak of the engineering method. Can it be that despite the vast expansion of our engineering knowledge since the sixteenth century, we still are using methods of analysis and design introduced over 400 years ago? This is a difficult question, for while on the one hand it is quite clear that in actual practice engineers use many different methods, the idea that there is a method common to all engineering is still a central concept both in engineering education and among those who believe they can identify an approach to problem solving that is distinctive to engineering. Can the so-called engineering method be defined in a way that enables us to distinguish engineering from other human endeavors? While engineering is a practical activity, so are cooking and child care. And while the engineering method is rational and empirical, so too are the methods used by scientists and judges. We get a bit closer to the
ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 86 specific features of engineering when its method is characterized as reductive. When engineers engage a problem, they sharply delimit the number of parameters examined and focus on those that show some promise of enabling them to control the structure or process in question. While engineering shares with science the search for causal understanding, it differs from science in treating that understanding as a means to control rather than as an end itself. Engineers also differ from scientists in what might be called their propensity for conceptual innovation. Whereas scientists are free to develop new concepts as necessary, while deferring until later questions about the "reality" of the entities they propose, engineers are much more constrained by the need to ensure that the concepts they use in analysis and explanation refer to physical entities and conditions that can be subjected to human control. If this characterization of the engineering method is correct, then this method powerfully influences the determination of which problems are to be considered engineering problems, as well as how those problems are to be analyzed and resolved. While the above description of the engineering method helps spell out some of the ideas associated with this concept, it remains quite abstract and certainly does not provide a sufficient account of the nature of engineering. Even at the level of method, this generally conceived view of the subject omits all the detail that informs the methods actually used by practicing engineers. It also says nothing about the substantive knowledge that engineers utilize when analyzing and solving problems. As Edward Constant has pointed out, the knowledge engineers find useful can range from the most abstract and general scientific knowledge (one thinks of the Euclidean geometry employed by the Italian fortress builders) to the most specific and context-dependent knowledge acquired by experience (such as the knowledge possessed by the stonecutters who built fortress walls). Engineers spend a great deal of their time acquiring, evaluating, and applying knowledge, whatever its source. In principle they are omnivorous and opportunistic, taking and using information from any source that is able to provide it. In practice, of course, they have developed a variety of means for collecting and screening the flood of information that would otherwise inundate them. Indeed, successful engineers realize there is always a danger that useful channels of information will be closed off, as occurs when the well-known "not invented here" mentality becomes dominant. To understand how engineers function, one therefore must pay attention to the knowledge resources they draw on as well as the methods they employ.
ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 87 The image of the engineer as an applier of scientific knowledge is in reality dated and quite inappropriate as a characterization of contemporary practice. In the nineteenth century it was thought that the relationships of science, engineering, and society could be captured in a rather simple formula, a crass but representative version of which served as the motto for the Century of Progress World's Fair held in Chicago in 1933: Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms. But this invocation of a well-worn slogan was at least a generation out of date, for with the rise of the science-based industries at the end of the nineteenth century, most notably the chemical and electrical industries, the relationship between science and engineering became much more complex than it had been. Rather than simply applying the discoveries of science, engineers increasingly had to design and carry out research programs of their own to generate the knowledge of substances and processes that they needed to solve the problems they faced. In the twentieth century, science and technology relate more through interpenetration than through sequential application, but we have not yet developed an understanding of this relationship that will allow us finally to dispense with the slogan that our predecessors found so uplifting. The realization that in the future engineers would have to generate much of the knowledge they would need naturally brought about a far-ranging examination of the ways in which young men were trained for careers in engineering. The focus of this particular debate has been the issue of creativity. As Michal McMahon has noted, throughout the twentieth century prominent engineering educators have been particularly concerned about sustaining the leading edge or creative sector of engineering. This concern has occupied a central place in the many reports they have produced and remains an issue today. What is creative engineering? The human capacity to be creative is certainly not something that is entirely the product of formal education, although it can be encouraged or discouraged by the attitudes of teachers and the ideologies of institutions. Thus, within engineering the issue of creativity becomes one of determining what sorts of engineering activities are considered to be of greatest importance and what means are most likely to promote their pursuit. Given the diversity within engineering as a whole, there is no reason to think that any single set of goals or activities will command general assent as being of preeminent importance. And since the word "creative" is a term of high praise in our culture, every active engineer will seek to characterize his work toward the goals he seeks to realize as creative. But we
ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 88 should not avoid the debate over creativity in engineering just because it has a strong tendency to evoke self-serving rhetoric. The issue is too important to ignore, especially because it leads directly into an examination of some of the most important disagreements over values within engineering. In the present century the debate among engineering educators over creativity has pivoted on the issue of how much and what kind of instruction in scientific subjects should be required of engineering students. Rather than dividing over whether or not engineering students should study science extensively, for all parties agreed they should, the participants in this debate have differed on whether the values of science, and the kinds of knowledge produced under their guidance, are appropriate and fruitful values for engineering. Dugald Jackson, who developed the first cooperative training program in 1907 while serving as head of the electrical engineering department at MIT, believed that the primary responsibility of engineering educators was to prepare their students to serve industry and advance to managerial positions. A thorough grounding in science was needed, but Jackson did not believe that the disinterested and noncommercial values of science were appropriate for engineering and he valued managerial effectiveness over technical creativity. Charles Steinmetz, the legendary General Electric research engineer and a founder and president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, opposed Jackson's philosophy of engineering education. He believed the success of modern engineering was a consequence of the progress of empirical science and he was appalled by the degree to which engineering schools continued to stress the acquisition of information rather than the mastery of modern methods of scientific investigation. He argued that while in college, engineering students should study the scientific foundations of engineering and the humanities, leaving until their entry into industry such training in technical practice as they might need. For Steinmetz, the promotion of creativity was the proper goal of education and for engineers the study of basic science was its means. A generation after Jackson and Steinmetz debated the issue of creativity, William Wickenden again raised Steinmetz's banner in his justly famous 1929 report on engineering education. As McMahon reports, Wickenden concluded that the engineering colleges were so burdened by having to train legions of engineers for the ordinary supervisory and commercial needs of industry that they were largely unfit to train students for the research activities that are also a vital part of engineering. A quarter century after Wickenden's report, Frederick Terman, reflecting on his wartime service as head of the Radar Countermeasures
