Chapter 1 Review - The Ignorance of Engineers and How They Know It

 PART 1 - Reflections on Practice

Chapter 1 - The Ignorance of Engineers and How They Know It - Hans Poser

The chapter starts with a reference to another book - What Engineers Know and How They Know It by Walter G. Vincenti. Mentioning here as a recommendation to the future. 

I felt that this chapter was definitely more than what I could chew, but I will try my best to comprehend it succinctly over here. 

We humans have a permanent struggle with Contingency. Our life world is full of uncertainties, imponderability, unforeseen accidents; and we as human beings try to overcome this situation through the sciences, which impose necessity – in the first place. 

The main idea of this chapter is that Science can not operate alongside Ignorance, but Engineering can, and there is a use to Engineer's ignorance.

In the field of Technology, the nature of knowledge can be of 4 types, this is useful to clarify so that their corresponding ignorance can be taken into account.

1. Knowing what as factual knowledge; 
2. Knowing why as theoretical and causal knowledge; 
3. Knowing how as practical action knowledge;
4. Knowing what for as normative value knowledge.

Engineers deal with Ignorance (in the sense of non-knowledge) of at least four different types - 

1. Ignorance is the starting point of each design and its development by marking a problem.
2. Problem-solving often needs creativity, which you can't predict, so it would be ignorance or non-knowledge.
3. R & D departments need to communicate about ignorance, namely concerning the guiding problem, which has to be solved.
4. Unknown possible consequences of technology, another thing you can't predict – have to be evaluated by means of the methods of technology assessment.

Here is the big difference between the ignorance of a scientist vs ignorance of an engineer

Scientists are seeking for the most general laws, whereas engineers are looking for better ends. This has far-reaching consequences for the ignorance in question.

Another important distinction between science and engineering is that actualizability is always a conditio sine qua non from the very beginning of each engineering design.

In all sciences, the problems they deal with originate with the sciences themselves. But for engineering at least, the situation differs completely, since its aims stem from the needs of individuals or of society.

One can say that an engineer’s ignorance has a typical structure depending on epistemological connections since this ignorance is knowledge of non-knowledge, i.e. a meta-knowledge. It has content, it leads to a problem, and it can be formulated as a question. Therefore an engineer’s ignorance has both a structure and a content.

This chapter also makes references to Emil du Bois-Reymond’s "Ignoramus et Ignorabimus – We do not know and we will never know", when discussing the fundamental limits of knowledge.

Ignorance as Knowledge of a Problem to Be Solved

An engineer’s ignorance means: There is a problem to be solved. And “a problem to be solved” means: There is an aim to be reached. 

Therefore the engineer needs -

1. Knowledge concerning the means to achieve the aim ;
2. Knowledge of how to gain and how to use such a means;
3. Knowledge concerning values behind the aim; and
4. Knowledge of how to modify the aim in the light of values, if necessary.

Ignorance, therefore, is not the missing knowledge of nature, but missing knowledge of functions transforming a given situation into an intended end.

Human being is capable of imaginations that are diverse from the actual situations, for example, they can think about other possibilities, they can think about norms and values governing the situation, and they can think teleologically about means and ends.

This capability allows them to communicate with others on missing elements of knowledge and to indicate the direction of creative problem solutions. Therefore ignorance of this kind is the precondition of development as well as of technological creativity.

In Conclusion -

1. The engineer’s ignorance has both structure and content: 

2. It is a kind of meta-knowledge (knowledge of non-knowledge); 

3. It characterizes a problem (knowing the direction of an aim); 

4. It leads to a question (asking for a means to an end); 

5. It has as a background explicit technological and normative knowledge. (Content and Context)

6. In at least two cases the engineer’s ignorance is characterized by an Ignorabimus (Unpredictibility): 

•  Creative solutions are never predictable; 
•  Complex developments, mapped in simulations and feasibility projects, are never predictable. 

 

So the bottom line is that an engineer's ignorance is not at all an error or something irrelevant – and by no means something which one ought to force them to give up. 

No creative solution is predictable, but creativity as an expression of human freedom. In most cases and especially in engineering, creativity is aim-directed and not a hazard.