Why Philosophy? Why Now? Engineering Responds to the Crisis of a Creative Era

Abstract

This chapter asks why philosophers and engineers are now meeting together at international workshops and answers from an engineering perspective using an analogy to Kuhn. Specifically, the chapter suggests that engineers are now seeking conceptual clarification using philosophy in the technological crisis of a creative era in the same way that scientists sought conceptual clarification using philosophy in the scientific crisis that came in the wake of the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics. The chapter starts by enumerating a number of ways in which philosophers and engineers are strange bedfellows. It continues with a cursory sociotechnical review of recent times. It carries on by making the connection to Kuhn, and it concludes with three specific ways in which philosophy can help engineers achieve greater methodological, pedagogical, and epistemological clarity. Although the chapter wonders whether newly philosophical engineers will persist in their reflections, it suggests that, regardless, the encounter should be productive for engineering and philosophy, both.