Jon,
Ben’s post has said a lot of what I would have said, so I’ll just add a few notes by insertion here … From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com] Sent: 19-May-16 09:13 Gary F., List: Gf: Science as a discipline of engineering? That’s too much of a stretch for me ... It would be like claiming that mathematics is a discipline of physics. Only more so. :) Js: Well, I acknowledged that it is a provocative notion. The point is that science is pursued with the same basic motivation--transforming dissatisfaction into satisfaction--as engineering and any other human endeavor. Gf: Now I’m seeing the limitations of your hypothesis that ALL human endeavor is rooted in dissatisfaction. It seems to ignore more positive motivations such as curiosity, participation and playfulness in all its forms. The quest for knowledge can be much more than an escape from a state of dissatisfaction. Peirce’s dictum would, I suppose, portray not yet possessing the object of one’s quest as a “state of dissatisfaction,” but that’s only one perspective on the questing tendency. Gf: Engineering, as I understand it, always involves some technology, some manipulation of the physical world for some conscious purpose other than discovery of its nature. Js: Why should discovering the nature of the physical world be privileged over all other conscious purposes? Gf: It isn’t, except by a physicist per se. But discovery of principles in nature — including the nature of conscious purposes as a specialized subset of final causes, or natural purposes — is, for any philosopher, ethically privileged over manipulation of any kind, because self-control depends on it. It is also privileged over “Practice,” according to Peirce, because for Science, “Nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real,— the object of its worship and its aspiration. It therein takes an entirely different attitude toward facts from that which Practice takes” (EP2:55). Gf: The conception or selection of that purpose, of the end to which the engineering project is the means, is the job of the normative sciences, which are themselves only part of science in the Peircean sense. This reflects the status of engineering as almost purely instrumental--clients and managers dictate what engineers do, rather than engineers themselves. My writings on engineering ethics attempt to explore whether and how engineers might someday escape this "social captivity," as Steven L. Goldman has called it. Gf: The status of engineering as a profession (as opposed to a discipline) is a sociological issue, and I wasn’t trying to say anything about that. There’s nothing in the nature of the discipline that stops a professional engineer (or a client, or a manager!) from taking a scientific or philosophical approach to the matter at hand. Gary f. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.linkedin.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
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