92:3 July 2009
Philosophy and Engineering 

Advisory Editors: Peter Simons, University of Leeds and Sir Duncan Michael, Arup Group

The discipline of engineering provides an interesting family of problems for philosophical investigation, and ideas deriving from the ontology of action, process, and structure are increasingly being applied to engineering specifications of complex artefacts, their production and their functions. This issue addresses itself to philosophically interested engineers as well as to philosophers and the general reader, and aims to further the growing fruitful interaction between the two disciplines. Topics to be explored may include the following: How does engineering differ from science? How does design relate to function? What is acceptable risk and how should it impinge on engineering decisions? Who bears responsibility for engineering failures and disasters in complex projects? What special skills are required by engineers and how are they imparted? What is the nature of technical artefacts? Does engineering require or underwrite a particular ontology? Can philosophy help in the design, creation and deployment of engineering products, for example by providing the ontological framework for computer representations of complex artefacts?

Table of Contents:

Peter M. Simons

Foreword


Michael Davis

Defining Engineering from Chicago to Shantou


Carl Mitcham

The Philosophical Inadequacy of Engineering


Billy V. Koen

The Engineering Method and its Implications for Scientific, Philosophical, and Universal Methods


Riichiro Mizoguchi and Yoshinobu Kitamura

A Functional Ontology of Artifacts

 

Wybo Houkes and Pieter E. Vermaas

Contemporary Engineering and the Metaphysics of Artefacts: Beyond the Artisan Model


Christian Illies and Anthonie Meijers

Artefacts Without Agency


Hans Poser

Technology and Necessity


Mariam Thalos

Systems