Compromised exactness and the rationality of engineering

Abstract

There is a more than 200-year-long history to claims that science and/or engineering could be the basis for more effective public policies. These claims have remained largely theoretical, but, in principle, engineering reasoning, though not scientific reasoning, is a plausible model for policy-makers. This is because, through the design process, engineering like policy-making incorporates explicitly wilful and inescapably subjective value judgements. However, the experimental and evolutionary character of engineering problem-solving pose challenges to the political dimension of policy-making.