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