Does the History of Engineering Require the Philosophy of Engineering?

Subject Areas : Philosophy

علیرضا  ثقه الاسلامی ¹ (ندارد)

Received: 2010-06-29 Accepted : 2010-11-23 Published : 2010-03-21

Keywords: history of engineering, philosophy of engineering, Philosophy of Technology, demarcation problem, priority problem, autonomy problem,

Abstract :

This paper analyzes critically how the philosophy of engineeringaffects to collect the history of engineering so that it is answered indetail to this problem that “Does the history of engineering entail thephilosophy of engineering”. At first, it is identified the relation ofbetween engineering and technique, in order to be explored the relationof between engineering and technology. Therefore, it is definedtechnology as an actual epistemic system and engineering as aknowledge and potential creative practice into the technologicalframework. Thus, it is understood the philosophy of engineering as adeveloped field of the philosophy of technology so that it isdistinguished as an independent philosophical field with having, atleast, a unique original question “what is engineering”. Therefore, someof issue and problem in the philosophy of technology transfer into thephilosophy of engineering and influence it, some of problem such as:the demarcation problem between engineered artifact and naturalobject, the demarcation problem between engineering and science, theexistential and historical priority problem between engineering andscience, and the autonomy problem of engineering knowledge to socialcontext. Finally, according to the applicable and open problems, it isshowed how the philosophy of engineering and its problems affects tocollect the history of engineering. Consequently, it seems thatresearchers of the history of engineering should concern the problemsfor their studies and think about them critically and strategically.