The Establishment of Engineering Science: The Harmony of Theory and Practice

Abstract

This chapter analyzes how a number of key individuals at universities, polytechnics, and Technische Hochschulen helped to formally establish engineering science as a new intermediate mode of knowledge that existed between science and technology and between theory and practice and helped to establish an ideology for engineering science based on the idea of a harmony of theory and practice. The chapter focuses on the role of W. J. M. Rankine at Glasgow University, Ferdinand Redtenbacher at the Polytechnische Schule at Karlsruhe, Franz Reuleaux at what would become the Technische Hochschule at Charlottenburg, Gaspard Monge at the Ecole polytechnique, Arthur-Jules Morin at the Conservatoire des arts et metiers, and Robert Henry Thurston at Cornell University. The chapter concludes by arguing that formal establishment of engineering science in Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States began to transform technology into a scientific discipline. But this scientific discipline was not simply applied science. It had its own framework that included new concepts that combined elements of science and technology, such as stress, strain, coefficient of friction, modulus of machines, efficiency, wave-line and streamline. In addition, engineering science developed some of its own methodologies, such as descriptive geometry, parameter variation, and graphical analysis.