Philosophy of engineering not a contradiction in terms

I've been on a philosophy reading/learning jag for a number of months, and one of the questions I've had is why isn't there a well defined literature on the philosophy of engineering. Science has a longstanding literature on the philosophy of science. Other fields of practice, for example law and medicine seem more philosophically inclined. Engineering (and business for that matter) seem less inclined toward philosophical reflection and speculation.

On the one hand, this dearth of philosophizing can be attributed to the practical nature of the engineering enterprise. Engineers are busy doing, and reflection on that activity detracts from getting the job done, but this argument does not answer why engineering scholars in the academy and elsewhere don't spend more time reflecting on the place of engineering in the world, the ontology and epistomology of engineering artifacts and knowledge, engineering method, ethics, and other philosophical topics.

Although there is a growing community of engineering scholars concerned with ethics, there appears to be a substantial philosophical hole in the engineering literature. Some of the chapters of The Entrepreneurial Engineer were essentially philosophical in nature, and an interesting course of action would be to take those loose threads and tie them together into a more integrated philosophy of engineering. Stay tuned for further posts along these lines.

Solomon and existentialism

I've just started Robert Solomon's Teaching Company course No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life. I've enjoyed his Nietzsche course and his Passions course (see here and here). Looks like another winner.

Examined Life

I'm in the middle of reading Robert Nozick's Examined Life. As you can see from the table of contents (below)

1. Introduction
2. Dying
3. Parents and Children
4. Creating
5. The Nature of God, The Nature of Faith
6. The Holiness of Everyday Life
7. Sexuality
8. Love's Bond
9. Emotions
10. Happiness
11. Focus
12. Being More Real
13. Selflessness
14. Stances
15. Value and Meaning
16. Importance and Weight
17. The Matrix of Reality
18. Darnkness and Light
19. Theological Explanations
20. The Holocaust
21. Enlightenment
22. Giving Everything Its Due
23. What is Wisdom and Why to Philosophers Love It So?
24. The Ideal and the Actual
25. The Zigzag of Politics
26. Philosophy's Life
27. A Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Man

Nozick has something to say about everything, and much of what he has to says is interesting if not entirely persuasive. I'm slugging through the middle sections on what is real (Ch. 12-17), and I like the framework, but the whole thing seems a bit more Platonically ideal than real. Nonetheless the categories he sets up seem useful and worth the effort.

Pink's whole new mind

Daniel Pink has a new book called A Whole New Mind in which he explores the logic of employment in what he calls the conceptual age. Given the 3 As (abundance, automation, and Asia), traditional high paying employment in the information age (business, engineering, accounting) that involves left-brain skills (analytical thinking and language) will be supplanted by increased emphasis on right-brain skills (creativity and art).

The argument of a shift to creativity makes sense. The idea that these skills will supplant analytical skills across the employment spectrum does not. My view is that Pink is right that entrepreneurial engineers going forward will need to be more creative. They will need to be category creators, not category enhancers. They will still be valued for their analytical skills, but the best engineers will be distinguished by strong right brain skills.

Read A Whole New Mind and see if you agree.

Advance praise for TEE

A number of people have written some nice things about The Entrepreneurial Engineer. Here's Severn's Chair for Human Behavior, Ray Price:

The Entrepreneurial Engineer is important for engineers at any stage of their careers. Goldberg presents lessons and insights that are critical for engineering students who are forming their professional perspectives and attitudes and useful for practicing engineers who are assessing their lives and careers. Goldberg writes in a style that is informative, provocative, and practical. The skills he describes and challenges us to develop are critical for the demanding and creative engineering profession—will we make the most of the opportunities before us? Developing the skills outlined in The Entrepreneurial Engineer is a necessity for a productive engineering career.

Raymond L. Price
William H. Severns Professor of Human Behavior
Director, Illinois Leadership Center
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

TEE page proofs in

The page proofs for The Entrepreneurial Engineer are into Wiley and the book will come out later this summer.

And the teach goes on

I'm working on a new Teaching Company course Passions: Philosophy and Intelligence of the Emotions. Robert Solomon of UT Austin is doing a bangup job integrating philosophical, psychological, and neurological evidence. I took Solomon's Nietzche course, and it was also well done.

More teaching company

My latest Teaching Company course during exercise is Philosophy of Religion by James Hall of the University of Richmond. The lectures are quite good, although I think the 36 lectures could have been compressed into a shorter course. Patrick Grim's Questions of Value was outstanding as was Zarefsky's Argumentation.

Change the World

My colleague Ray Price (see Illinois Leadership Initiative here) recommended that I read Robert Quinn's Change the World: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Results, and I did so this past weekend. There is a good bit of fear and talk of change at the university, but top-down strategic planning efforts are quite easily thwarted by a conservative faculty that does not see any urgency in change. Quinn recommends an 8-step Advanced Change Theory that he claims overcomes the inertia of a settled "normal" perspective within an organization. Drawing on such all-star transformational change agents as Jesus, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, the theory recommends the following:

1. Envision the productive community
2. First look within
3. Transcend fear
4. Embrace the hypocritical self
5. Embody a vision of the common good
6. Disturb the system
7. Surrender to the emergent process
8. Entice through moral power

All of the chapters and elements of the theory made sense to me, but I especially appreciated the embrace of the hypocritical self. In trying to institute change in the organizations I am a part of and in myself, I am always confronted by the gap between the ideal I am attempting to achieve and the reality of what I am able to accomplish (with myself and others). Quinn suggests that this is a universal and that even when we are effective change agents, the gap remains, and further efforts are always necessary. I have sometimes been concerned that my inability to achieve long-term near-ideal change labels me as a phony, a hypocrite, but Quinn suggests that this is one of the prices of attempting change. If you don't want to feel hypocritical, don't try to change, but to paraphase an aphorism of love Quinn might suggest that it is bettter to have tried to change and been hypocritical than to never have attempted change at all.

In short, I give Change the World three stars. Read and overthrow the established order today.

Selling

Jack Krupansky's blog Entrepreneurial Engineering has a post on rainmaking that references a post by Guy Kawasaki. My favorite entry is

Make prospects talk. If prospects are open to buying your product or service, they will usually tell you what it will take to close them. All you have to do is (a) ask questions to get them talking about their needs, (b) shut up, (c) listen, and then (d) explain how your product or service fills their needs (if it indeed does). Most salespeople can't do this because (a) they're not prepared to ask good questions; (b) they're too stupid to shut up; and (c) they don't know their product or service well enough to know whether it can in fact fill these needs. When it comes to rainmaking, there's clearly a reason why God gave us two ears but only one mouth.

The Entrepreneurial Engineer spends a good deal of time talking about the importance of questioning in all kinds of interpersonal situations including salesmanship.