Engineering

"Engineering is, in its most general sense, turning an idea into a reality – creating and using tools to accomplish a task or fulfil a purpose."

"The word ‘engineer’ derives not, as you might imagine, from being-someone-who-deals-with-engines but rather from its Latin root ingeniarius, Old French engignier, and Middle English engyneour to mean someone who is ingenious in solving practical problems."

"The six horizontal divisions or categories of engineering activity are civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, computing, and, more recently, medical engineering."

"Man’s ability to make tools is remarkable. But it is his ingenious ability to make sense of the world and use his tools to make even more sense and even more ingenious tools, that makes him exceptional. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, ‘we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us’. Tools are part of what it is to be human. In the words of Henry Petroski, ‘To engineer is human’."

"Yet for many, there is a disturbing cloud. Once tools were simple common sense – almost all were understandable to the intelligent layperson. Since the Industrial Revolution, the interior workings of many tools have become mysterious, complex, and opaque to all but specialists. The culture of opposition between the arts, religion, science, and technology has widened and is often antagonistic. Matthew Crawford has accused engineers of hiding the works, ‘rendering many of the devices we depend on every day unintelligible to direct inspection’. On the other hand, Brian Arthur has described a process he calls ‘structural deepening’ in which engineers inevitably add complexity as they strive to enhance performance. There is an increasing realization that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are intertwined in a way that needs disentangling. This is urgent because engineering is so intimately part of who we are that effective democratic regulation requires us to understand something of what engineering offers, what it might offer in the future, and, perhaps most importantly, what it cannot ever deliver."

"Some of the various types of engineer: Acoustic, aeronautical, aerospace, agricultural, asphalt, automotive, biomechanical, biomedical, bridge, building, cast metal, chartered, chemical, civil, computer (software, hardware), concrete, construction, cost, control, corrosion, craft, dam, design, diesel, dynamics, electrical, electronic, engineering worker, environmental, explosives, finance, fire, gas, harbour, healthcare, heating, highway, incorporated, industrial, information, instrumentation, knowledge, lighting, marine, material, measurement and control, mechanical, medical, mineral, mining, motor, municipal, naval architects, non-destructive testing, nuclear, operations, photonics, plumbing, power, production, professional, project management, quality, railway, refrigeration, registered, reliability, river, robotic, royal (military), safety, sanitary, sensor, signal processing, space, structural, sustainability, systems, technician, transportation, turbine, welding, water."

"Confusion about the words ‘engineering’ and ‘technology’ often derives from different uses by different people from different backgrounds in different contexts. We therefore have to be very careful to make clear what we mean. In this book, I will use engineering and technology as synonyms but distinct from science and mathematics in their central purpose. So in summary, the purpose of science is to know by producing ‘objects’ of theory or ‘knowledge’. The purpose of mathematics is clear, unambiguous, and precise reasoning. The purpose of engineering and technology is to produce ‘objects’ that are useful physical tools with other qualities such as being safe, affordable, and sustainable. All are activities arising from human will that sustains our sense of purpose. Science is an activity of ‘knowing’, whereas engineering and technology are activities of ‘doing’ – but both rely on mathematics as a language and a tool. The methods they adopt to achieve their purposes are so very similar that, unless you understand their motive and purpose, it is often unclear whether a given person is behaving as a scientist or as an engineer/technologist."

"The story of engineering naturally divides into five ages – gravity, heat, electromagnetism, information, and systems. The first three are the natural phenomena that scientists study and that engineers and technologists use to make their tools. From the ancient skills used to build pyramids from natural materials to the modern engineering of skyscrapers, we have systematically developed our scientific understanding of gravity and used it to build bigger, higher, and longer. Our primitive control of fire has developed into mechanical and chemical power from heat through steam, internal combustion, and jet engines and manufactured materials. Electromagnetism is a relative latecomer in the long history of human development which has given us electricity, motors, computers, and telecommunications. Out of this came the age of information, which has turned now into the age of complex systems. In the last chapter, we will see how ‘systems thinking’ is helping us to integrate disparate specialisms by seeing tools as physical ‘manipulators’ of energy embedded in ‘soft’ people systems. From the science of Aristotle to Newton to Einstein, from the craft of Vitruvius to Leonardo to William Morris, and from the engineering of Archimedes to Faraday, to Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web, the story of engineering is racing ahead at an ever-increasing pace. It is a story that has had, and is still having, a profound influence on the quality of human life."

Engineering: A Very Short Introduction, by David Blockley