Ibo van de Poel and David E. Goldberg (eds): Philosophy and Engineering. An Emerging Agenda

Since Philosophy and Engineering. An Emerging Agenda arrived over the mail, I have picked it up numerous times with the intention to finally read a substantial part of it and form myself an opinion about it. But what makes this somewhat difficult, is that Philosophy and Engineering is not so much an edited volume, but a conference proceedings in book-shape. It is the tangible outcome of the ‘Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering’ (WPE), which took place in October 2007 in Delft (The Netherlands). With 81 participants and 40 paper presentations it was, to co-editor Van de Poel’s knowledge, ‘‘the largest organized activity bringing together engineers and philosophers in the last two decades.’’ The volume contains no less than 28 of these 40 papers, amounting to about 350 pages. They are divided in three parts: ‘Philosophy, ‘Ethics’, and ‘Reflection’ (by engineers). The book’s strength is at the same time its weakness: its scope. It does have an explicit focus that sets it apart from much other work; ‘‘Whereas science and, to a lesser extent, technology have spurred dedicated philosophical investigations’’, says Van de Poel in his introductory chapter, ‘‘philosophical reflection on engineering is still rare.’’ The volume makes an effort to fill this gap. If one wants to get an impression of the variety of topics that one might study in this new and emerging area, it is a great place to start. The chapters have a nice length for such a first introduction. Some examples of topics addressed are the nature of generalizations in engineering sciences, the limits to system engineering, the role of models in engineering, the importance of integrity for engineers, the engineering profession in France, the responsibility of engineers and teaching ethics to engineers. Let me briefly discuss some of the 10 chapters in the part ‘Ethics’, which is probably the most interesting for readers of Science and Engineering Ethics, to give a better feel for what one can expect to find in this book.