Engineering Action in Micro-, Meso-, and Macro-contexts

Abstract

Context initially referred to linguistic context of language texts and discourse in the fields of linguistics and communication. But philosophers of engineering should research the context in which engineering practitioners both speak and act. Engineering action means not only an individual’s action, but also a collective action participated in by many kinds of engineering practitioners. Modern engineering action is usually undertaken by an enterprise as a special kind of community. The context of engineering action can be divided into three levels: micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. For a particular engineering decision-maker and a particular engineering action, the boundary between action and context is to some extent may be changeable, but it does not mean that there is no boundary between action and context. The problem of context is not only a theoretical one, but also a practical one.