What a job
I’m an engineer.
Of that I’m fairly sure. I studied engineering, got the degree though not the T-shirt, and have worked in the profession since the mid-1990s: but what exactly does it mean? Even after all this time in the profession, I would struggle to give a concise answer to the question: what is an engineer, actually? What is engineering?
We could list out a range of products that engineers have had a hand in creating through history (was there a first, an Ur-engineer?), and what we are developing at present (can you really engineer software?). We could list out all the different flavours of engineering that can be studied. I could make a list of all the activities I undertake to get a product out onto the market. I could make a list of all the documentation I (should) produce, all the processes and procedures I’m involved in (making for fascinating reading).
All of these perspectives - and more, no doubt - combine to make “engineering”, but how, and why? What do these things symbolise? Is there a common essence of engineering? What is not engineering? In what way do the things that I have learned, done, and produced combine to make me an engineer? Or, what about me makes me an engineer? Would I still be an engineer without the engagements with and from other groups like purchasing, sales, quality, as well as other engineers (process engineers who got the production lines to where they are, for example), and customers (with their own engineers, buyers, quality personnel… etc)? Alone, would I just be a tinkerer? Just a dreamer? Is an unemployed engineer still an engineer? Do the effects of engineering wear off after time? (Can I be cured of it?!)
Of course, just as a bird wouldn’t drop out of the sky if it suddenly realised that it didn’t quite understand how aerodynamics worked, an engineer doesn’t need to consider these questions to have a successful career: indeed, such thinking might even be incompatible with having a successful career – but it’s these sorts of questions that led me, over time, to start looking into the world of philosophy; to peer into the infinite rabbit hole and think: “That looks interesting…”
We engineers aren’t necessarily renowned for our reflections on the “meaning of all of this”, but when we roll our eyes at what we put ourselves through, all the demands that the engineering profession makes of us, this is also a fleeting form of reflection. I guess I’m just reflecting more than is usual.
Where it all didn’t begin
The only previous encounter I had with philosophy that I can recall before now is reading Sophie’s World once in my late teens. I think Dad had picked it up on a business trip, read it on the flight home, and passed it on to me. I’m sure I found it interesting, but although I did read it to the end, it didn’t leave a lasting impression. I fear I read it “wrong” in two ways: firstly, in expecting to end up “knowing” more by the time I’d finished; more for its points-scoring potential with my friends than for gaining profound insights into life. If the book contained any notion about philosophy being a journey, a way, rather than being a “thing-to-know”, or an “action”, it was lost on me. Secondly, I fear I read Sophie’s World wrong because philosophy seemed to run counter to my upbringing under the auspices of religion: I didn’t feel at the time that philosophy was really “allowed”. Any questions philosophy might have raised were already “answered”.
And that, pretty much, was that between philosophy and me for the next couple of decades.
Daunt you go there
Philosophers, as far as I knew, practically lived for unnecessarily complicated words like ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics and more. They seemed only able to express things in such tortured and obtuse language (laced with smatterings of German) that nobody could understand it, other than other professional philosophers (who at least knew how better to pretend to understand than we do).
When it wasn’t being incomprehensible, philosophy could be just downright silly.
Examples like the shadow play of Plato’s Allegory of the cave (also mentioned, as I recall, in Sophie’s World) cast philosophy into the form of a somewhat daft thought experiment without any practical use on how to act, to live my life or, eventually, how to study or think about engineering. Not a hint of it.
Mostly, though, like judges, philosophers simply come across as being out of touch with reality (although they do seem to “rediscover” it from time to time).
What has philosophy ever done for us?
It’s a bit of a struggle for an engineer to imagine how people make actual livings out of philosophy, other than by learning it and then teaching it. What’s the output, or, in that dreaded vernacular of ours: where’s the value-add? Clearly, though, humanity has managed to sustain and continue to develop philosophical thought throughout the centuries and through all manner of challenges, be they economic or ideological. The ways of thinking and of dialogue that philosophy enabled helped to widen and deepen our perceptions of what it is to be human. Philosophy has challenged engrained assumptions, created new ones, these in their turn to be challenged; ultimately, it spawned the idea of logic and the scientific method, enabled human rights to be valued, and provided a humanist (others might say cold and godless) way of contemplation and reflection, amongst other things. Most Westerners has heard of Aristotle and Plato. My knowledge of Eastern philosophy is limited to having heard of Confucius. Many have heard of Hannah Arendt or Martin Heidegger. Philosophy has its rock stars.
Equally, of course, philosophy doesn’t protect its practitioners from thundering idiocy: Heidegger, for example, was a committed and unapologetic Nazi. Even in the 1980s, the British philosopher and polemicist Roger Scruton was talking about the “swinish multitudes” who clearly didn’t understand or accept their place in society.
Perhaps unexpectedly, though, philosophy is still a thing; young people study it! At Oxford University in 2018, nearly 8% of students had Philosophy in their course title (combined in studies with psychology and linguistics (PPL); politics and economics (PPE), Physics and Philosophy (40 students!), and Philosophy and Theology). In Germany in 2019, 21k from a total of around 1.6M students were enrolled in philosophy courses, giving a perhaps more realistic 1.2%. There also seems to be a general level of acceptance that the mental skillset that philosophers gain during their studies is valued in the job market – just not in engineering.
I am not a philosopher.
Of that I am very sure. At least it seems a more realistic prospect for an engineer to become an amateur philosopher than for a philosopher to be an amateur engineer (assuming we could define the latter). I like to think that the potential for damage is smaller this way around.
Do you absolutely have to write about it?
Reading about philosophy is one thing, but it’s something else entirely to try and state your own case in your own words. The whole challenge of philosophy lies in converting some rather diffuse thoughts and feelings about a matter into cogent words that could be understood by others.
And this is where you, the reader come in. You’re my sounding board, even if you never read this. If you do end up reading this, then we will have entered into a dialogue, even if you never respond. And if you do respond - then things can really come to life.
The other thing that I’ve noticed so far is that philosophers are totally focussed on words. They seem incapable of sketching or drawing their concepts into images or flows or maps: structured thinking and sketching tends to be an important engineering tool, and it’s an idea that I’d like to pursue as I progress with this blog, though not for this post – this is a wordy one.
What: All of philosophy?
In a word, no. In two words, no: but. My intention is to focus on “just” engineering - but its connections to and overlaps with science, technology in general, nature, companies, economics, ethics and society mean that it’s impossible to view engineering in isolation. This in turn means that, right now, it’s difficult to set the scope, to create a definitive boundary diagram for this particular investigation.
Go on, then, get to the point
The point that I am slowly uncovering is that there isn’t a point. It’s a whole plane of investigation, probably even several planes. Or a sphere. Or an unbounded universe of thought… I don’t know! Philosophy involves trying to analyse and describe the many interactions, intersections and interfaces of being, with humans at its centre. But, whilst philosophy provided us with the concept of logic, it doesn’t tend to provide algorithms.
The perspective that appeals to me at present is Aristotle’s one of working towards a common “good”, this being whatever is expected of our community. Define community? Exactly – a challenge! Define “good”? Even harder! We as engineers are associated with many communities, and it’s up to us to reflect on how deep and wide the “goods” of our actions are transmitted.
Questioning and dialogue seem to be the philosophical way of analysing our own satisfactions and frustrations around the business of engineering, and these are methods that I will bear in mind as I progress.
There are unresolvable tensions to acknowledge, different forms of knowledge itself, phases of being and becoming, awareness of the concepts of interpretation and understanding, agency and ethics, to name a few of the major points that I’ll be delving into, irregularly, over time.
The point of the point being?
To put it concisely (this being the first attempt at describing why I’m doing this):
I am starting a philosophical investigation into engineering to help myself - and, potentially, others - to reflect on what it is we put ourselves through as engineers, and why. To reflect on and, perhaps, even, to begin to understand, our methods and our outputs into society.
Also, one quote I recently encountered seems apt, if wrong:
‘There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.’ Henri Bergson
Right now, though, I’m right at the beginning of the journey. Since that one offhand comment from a friend of ours a few years ago sparked things off, I have read some of the simpler travel guides, started to learn a few words from a phrasebook and browsed through some of the highlights online. But I don’t have an itinerary, let alone a destination.
Did someone bring the map?
