Reading Daniel C. Dennett’s book From bacteria to Bach and back, I encountered the following quotes, which fit in quite well to the "why philosophy" question I asked in my previous post:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates
and:
“The over-examined life is nothing to write home about either.”
Kurt Baier
These quotes give an inkling of the lower and upper boundary limits for a philosophical examination of engineering, though we can’t on this basis consider the upper specification level to be defined in the slightest.
Equally, the notion of “examination” itself is also very loose, varying between the possibilities of scientific and cultural, energetic and ethical modes or perspectives.
I’ll take Baier’s comment as a warning (an upper control limit rather than a specification limit), as something to take to heart, as we all have jobs to do, lives outside of engineering to live, without overthinking things…
(Aristotle’s notion of praxis, of living life in the world, with all its undefinable skills and interactions, remains as valid as ever)
It's well worth noting one further critical aspect here - Socrates I think is implying a human life in his statement. Animal and plant life is by its "nature" unexamined, but is not "not worth" living. Natural life has its own intrinsic worth in distinguishing our planet from any other that we have ever spotted, and it provided the building blocks that resulted in the evolution of us humans.
In terms of human life, the word "worth" is also laden with meaning(s): "not worth" is a dangerous thought, no matter how lightly or specifically Socrates actually meant it. Which is why, at this stage, I'm content to stay at the level of the engineering life, and whatever Socrates' phrase might mean to you, as well as to me.
To paraphrase into our world: "the unexamined life in engineering gets us paid, but can lead to a dead end."
