Why Does Engineering Matter?

What is Engineering?

Engineering. What image comes into your head when you hear that word? For some, it will be a person on a construction site in a business shirt and hard hat, hands spreading out a massive sheet with building plans drawn on it, others will see a mad scientist tinkering with crazy inventions sure to bring about world destruction. Maybe you see the mechanic at your local garage. Engineering can be used to mean a concept along the lines of ‘working in an artful/shrewd/clever way to bring something about’ with those words ‘clever’ and ‘artful’ insinuating something of underhandedness. Take the term ‘social engineering’, for example, generally describing techniques used to exploit human weaknesses. Alternatively we can say someone can ‘engineer a scenario’ which has its own, usually sinister or fraudulent intimations. Engineering is a strange word to define and an engineer is an even harder person to pin-down.

The hard definition of engineering as in: “an engineer does engineering” usually lands somewhere along the lines of the American Engineers' Council for Professional Development’s definition:

“The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.”

Wordy, right? But with a name like... deep breath... 'AmericanEngineers'CouncilforProfessionalDevelopment’, what did you expect? My personal definition is a lot simpler: 

Engineering - Combining art with science to create something truly original and functional that solves a problem.

~ Thomas McKee, Just Now

This is an inclusive definition, to reflect the way we use the term, at least in the UK culture that I live in. It doesn’t say what an engineer isn’t. It doesn’t try to say every different thing that engineering does, It just says that anything that does this is, inherently, engineering. People do seem to see art as 'functionless' and maybe it is depending on how we use the term. Truly I agree that, art for art’s sake is something different to engineering. My old colleague used to quip as an antidote to the pithy and presumptuous phrase “form follows function”, “Sometimes form is a function." This was meant to mean something like: 'art is than just aesthetics, art has a purpose too.' I think I would steal the sentiment but bring it deeper to something more like: without art, purpose cannot be dreamt into reality.

Art as I see it, is about pure creation, making something out of nothing if you will. An act of bringing something material out of the immaterial mind. Music, painting, dance…I see them as an expression of the immaterial state of mind translated into a physical medium to be shared with other immaterial minds. Depending on your worldview, this may seem perfectly reasonable or you may be about to give up on this pretentious, self-indulgent blog written by an engineer trying his hand at an engineer’s infamous kryptonite: talking to wome- I mean: Writing. Either way it’s my blog so I get to make the rules. 

Science I see as studying the known physical world, finding pictures to describe what is happening in the world at a deeper and deeper level. These pictures maybe aren't technically true with a capital T (for example, what we learn about electrons in school is far from the most accurate models of what we truly know about 'electrons' - they are more akin to probabilistic cloud than a negatively charge little ball thing spinning about a nucleus) but they do give an extremely useful tool in describing what will happen in certain scenarios. Science makes predictions about what will happen in the future based on models built from past results and gives us confidence in those predictions. It comes up with these brilliant models that help us understand these predictions which are really, meaningfully true to the level of resolution that we need. And we can simplify these truths even further! There is a meme that goes: To an engineer, pi = e = 3. A bit silly, but it gets the point across that engineering is no more pure science than it is pure art. Engineering takes sciences explanatory power down to the level necessary to enable a functional output. Sometimes, we don’t go down to a deep enough resolution of truth: pi = e = 3. Sometimes we go too far. One of the biggest trick in design engineering is knowing just how far down the rabbit hole to go. … but that is a conversation for another day. 

So engineering? It combines the two. Art and Science. Art the inspiration, the feeling translated into the physical, the end goal dreamt up and driven at. Science, the tool used to manipulate the physical outcome, the prediction machine used to understand what input gives that exact required output. And engineering? Well engineering therefore then becomes akin to magic, weaving a long and arduous spell that makes dreams into a solid reality.

So... is Engineering Worthwhile?

I think most of us would agree that in the out-of-control consumerism the world currently faces, bringing new things into the world is certainly not always a good thing and some mighty even argue that it is rarely even acceptable. We have all we need to survive but are constantly peddled to want more to feel satisfied. That's why, every year, the UK alone produces hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste. Technology has as much capacity for misuse as it has for usefulness, it is morally agnostic, but in the hands of moral agents, can be corrupted for evil use or harnessed for good.

I have defined engineering as problem solving. But usually, solving one problem can result in another being created: Food scarcity solved creates abundant, 'food' driven obesity. Social media solved the problem of long-distance human connection and resulted in short distance human disconnection. What I find so troubling is that these results were not necessary! We don't need to make social media addictive to the point of ruining mental health and relationships, we don't need to pump food full of addictive chemicals just to make a tiny bit more profit per item. The solutions to the problems are good in themselves but when humans corrupt, twist, pervert the solutions, everything falls apart. But what do we do then? I think, we should engineer solutions to the new problems. Make growing your own vegetables easier, make solutions that bring people together offline, engineering seems a never ending loop of solving problems but maybe it doesn't have to be.

Batman used to say something like 'if I kill a murderer, the total number of murderers in the world stays the same.' The simple rebuttal to Batman is always 'why don't you just kill two murderers?' When solving problems the most elegant solutions are long-term thinking, maximising the problems solved and minimising the problems created. In this instant gratification world, it's hard to act this way, it needs practice and what better way to practice it than in deep, intentional, long-sighted problem solving. If you're hungry and you eat sugar, you crash when your insulin spikes causing you to crave more repeating the cycle. If you instead decide to think about what your body needs, maybe some complex carbs, maybe some protein, some healthy fats and plenty of micronutrients, you've solved your short term hunger and protected yourself against future repercussions. Taking it even further- if you continue to do this, you protect yourself from even longer repercussions coming from eating sugary, fast food all the time: diabetes, heart disease, strokes. This is what good, elegant engineering does. It considers the long-term impact and finds a way not just to reduce immediate problems quickly but to solve the root of something causing many problems. If good engineering was Batman, it would be locking up the crime bosses.

So its hard to say objectively that engineering is inherently worthwhile. Does it have a net positive or net negative impact on the world? Most people would agree probably net positive. That's not to say, however, that it always will. The intention behind it and the use of it is the important thing. It's good to remember that people can use good things all the time and corrupt and twist them. Imagine someone bludgeons someone with a butternut squash. We wouldn't conclude from this event that a butternut squash is a bad thing. We would instead conclude that it was used in a bad way. I could sit here and list all of the good things that have occurred due to engineering-'electricity saves millions of lives', you could sit there and list all the bad just as easily 'electricity kills millions of people.' You could even argue that saving millions of lives isn't necessarily 'good', you could even argue there is no objective 'good' anyway. So how can I say, with confidence: "Engineering is worthwhile." Well... I can't. But I can, I think, say that I think it should be.

It should develop new ways of looking after people. It should develop new ways of looking after the world. It should be a tool used to compassionately help those who cannot help themselves. It should, as we can maybe all agree, reduce the unnecessary suffering in the world. All of these things, engineering has the potential to do, and if it is done right, with long-term solutions taking precedence and thoughtful innovation getting to the root of problems reducing the overall amount, then yes engineering is good. If it is not used in this way then maybe not but I think that the capacity for good should take priority over the potential for bad.

I pray I never suppress the pursuit of the good out of fear of the potential of the bad. I don't want to avoid lighting a candle because someone may use it to find and turn out the light switch. And maybe if we light enough candles, the world will become too bright for the darkness to hide.