On the Historical Nature of Engineering Practice

Revisiting the history of engineering since its first prehistoric traces and focusing more carefully on the last three millennia, the article constructs a four-dimensional typology of the disciplines that fed engineering throughout the epochs and cultures. It shows that these four dimensions are never totally integrated but also that the most brilliant and innovative engineers have been able to play on the four boards and associate them fruitfully. The reflection opens to a relational concept of the multidimensionality of engineering, where the links between the different dimensions may matter more than the individual dimensions or the accumulation of their contents. This way, the article expresses a message of hope about the future of engineering to which it claims to contribute to, showing that disintegration through detachment of different, diverse and complex components is not and unescapable even not problematic anymore as soon as we think of engineering as the art of holding this diversity together.

[1]  A. Figueiredo,et al.  Action Research and Design in Information Systems: Two Faces of a Single Coin , 2006 .

[2]  Philip Taylor,et al.  A phenomenographic study of academics' conceptions of science learning and teaching , 1994 .

[3]  Paulo Rupino da Cunha,et al.  Action Research and Design in Information Systems , 2007 .

[4]  George Basalla,et al.  Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History by Arnold Pacey (review) , 1992, Technology and Culture.

[5]  Elizabeth R. Peterson,et al.  Conceptions of Learning and Knowledge in Higher Education: Relationships with Study Behaviour and Influences of Learning Environments. , 2004 .

[6]  Robin Adams,et al.  What Does it Mean to Design? A Qualitative Investigation of Design Professionals' Experiences , 2012 .

[7]  Nelson N. Foote.  Identification as the basis for a theory of motivation. , 1951 .

[8]  Nancy J. Nersessian,et al.  The Cognitive-Cultural Systems of the Research Laboratory , 2006 .

[9]  C. Baillie,et al.  Seeing through the lens of social justice: a threshold for engineering , 2009 .

[10]  Ingrid Richardson,et al.  An actor-network approach to games and virtual environments , 2006 .

[11]  Claudio U. Ciborra,et al.  Crisis and foundations: an inquiry into the nature and limits of models and methods in the information systems discipline , 1998, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[12]  Carla B. Zoltowski,et al.  Students' Ways of Experiencing Human‐Centered Design , 2012 .

[13]  J. Dewey.  Human Nature and Conduct , 1921 .

[14]  John Law,et al.  Shaping technology building society: studies in socio-technical change , 1993 .

[15]  Pan Suk Kim,et al.  The history of management: a global perspective , 1995 .

[16]  Reed Stevens,et al.  Multiple Perspectives on Engaging Future Engineers , 2011 .

[17]  Jennifer M. Case,et al.  Emerging Research Methodologies in Engineering Education Research , 2011 .

[18]  C. Vicentini,et al.  Body mass index, urinary incontinence, and female sexual dysfunction: how they affect female postmenopausal health , 2009, Menopause.

[19]  Jörgen Sandberg,et al.  Unveiling Professional Development: A Critical Review of Stage Models , 2006 .

[20]  Cynthia F. Kurtz,et al.  The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world , 2003, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[21]  H. Rittel,et al.  Dilemmas in a general theory of planning , 1973 .

[22]  Julie Thompson Klein,et al.  Prospects for transdisciplinarity , 2004 .

[23]  N. Cross.  Designerly Ways of Knowing: Design Discipline Versus Design Science , 2001, Design Issues.

[24]  N. Cross.  Designerly ways of knowing , 2006 .

[25]  Howard S. Becker,et al.  The Development of Identification with an Occupation , 1956, American Journal of Sociology.

[26]  Douglas Lewin.  Engineering Philosophy—The Third Culture? , 1983 .

[27]  Eugene S. Ferguson,et al.  Engineering and the Mind's Eye , 1994 .

[28]  Sunny Y. Auyang,et al.  Engineering—An Endless Frontier , 2004 .

[29]  Annette Imhausen.  Ancient Egyptian mathematics: New perspectives on old sources , 2006 .

[30]  L. Boltanski,et al.  De la justification : les économies de la grandeur , 1991 .

[31]  Edwin T. Layton,et al.  American Ideologies of Science and Engineering , 1976 .

[32]  Robin Adams,et al.  Being a professional: Three lenses into design thinking, acting, and being , 2011 .

[33]  Bill Buxton,et al.  Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design , 2007 .

[34]  O. G. V. Simson.  The Gothic Cathedral: Design and Meaning , 1952 .

[35]  Jörgen Sandberg.  Understanding Human Competence at Work: An Interpretative Approach , 2000 .

[36]  Kate Ehrlich.  A conversation with Austin Henderson , 1998, INTR.

[37]  Douglas Lewin.  On the place of design in engineering , 1979 .