Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering: Historico-Philosophical and Critical Essays by Carl Mitcham

Abstract

Reviewed by: Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering: Historico-Philosophical and Critical Essays by Carl Mitcham Cyrus C. M. Mody (bio) Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering: Historico-Philosophical and Critical Essays By Carl Mitcham. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2020. Pp. 466. Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering: Historico-Philosophical and Critical Essays By Carl Mitcham. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2020. Pp. 466. Philosophy has many specialties: the "traditional ethics-politics-epistemology-ontology fourfold" of Western philosophy as well as narrower "regionalizations" such as bioethics or the philosophies of science, language, mind, religion, art, etc. (p. 352). One region that was missing from the philosophical map until recently—and is still hardly colored in—is the philosophy of engineering. Sure, many universities offer engineering ethics courses, and there is a long tradition of philosopher-engineers such as Walter Vincenti. But philosophers interested in what engineers do—well, that's a select group. No one has done more to put engineering on philosophy's map than [End Page 602] Carl Mitcham, both through his own writing and teaching and via tireless institution-building and collaboration. The present volume collects some of those writings (several of them co-authored) as a kind of survey of the field of philosophy of engineering. As the book's title hints, philosophy of engineering is still so new—especially compared to philosophy of science and even philosophy of technology—that any overview must be fragmentary, tentative, and tangled. Anyone looking for a synoptic presentation of the philosophy of engineering will have to wait. But as an introduction to a terra incognita, this collection of Mitcham's essays is a clearly-written, generous, and thoughtful guide. In other words, the volume as a whole should be assigned reading in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses, and some of the individual essays can go on syllabi for introductory or survey courses with an ENG, PHIL, STS, or HUMA prefix. As a book to read cover-to-cover, Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering possesses both the charms and tics of any collection of previously published essays. There is, for instance, a fair bit of repetition. In particular, Thomas Tredgold's definition of engineering is offered at least six separate times. Not that repetition is all bad—some of Mitcham's points are planted in one essay and bloom in another. The essays also sometimes lurch from one topic to something entirely different, reflecting Mitcham's diverse interests. Thankfully, the conclusion summarizes all the chapters and shows how they relate to each other. Several chapters end with strange codas, perhaps to set them apart from their published versions. Some are quite interesting—for example, one on Harry Truman's penchant for Hegel—but others are rather elusive. Finally, I have to note that the copyediting is mediocre, especially in the later essays. Whomever Rowman and Littlefield assigned did not do a job worthy of this volume. Mitcham's starting point is the observation that engineering is philosophically "inadequate." That is, whatever philosophical definition of engineering you choose, it has something to do with the social good, and yet critical understandings of the social good and how to contribute to it are almost entirely missing from engineering's technical canon and curriculum. This may or may not separate engineering from other professions—Mitcham makes that claim but then very generously offers (and mostly defers to) David Goldberg's counterargument. Either way, engineering sorely needs a critical perspective on its aims and conduct; and that requires engagement with philosophy, science and technology studies, and other fields comprising the interdisciplinary constellation of engineering studies. History is in that mix; Mitcham is a fan of this journal, and several essays survey the history of concepts and movements such as sustainable development, humanitarianism, and engineering ethics, sometimes via crossnational comparisons. Mitcham explores various ways of overcoming engineering's philosophical inadequacy by offering various critical analyses of concepts like [End Page 603] "energy," "policy," and more. But the theme that runs throughout is what he calls engineering plus respicere—the obligation for engineers to take more into account and acknowledge the limits of technical knowledge. The profession's military roots and managerial responsibilities mean...