Public policy requires public support, which in turn implies a need to enable the public not just to understand policy but also to be engaged in its development. Where complex science and technology issues are involved in policy making, this takes time, so it is important to identify emerging issues of this type and prepare engagement plans. In our horizon scanning exercise, we used a modified Delphi technique [1]. A wide group of people with interests in the science and policy interface (drawn from policy makers, policy adviser, practitioners, the private sector and academics) elicited a long list of emergent policy issues in which science and technology would feature strongly and which would also necessitate public engagement as policies are developed. This was then refined to a short list of top priorities for policy makers. Thirty issues were identified within broad areas of business and technology; energy and environment; government, politics and education; health, healthcare, population and aging; information, communication, infrastructure and transport; and public safety and national security.
Philosophy of engineering is an area of study that is still in its infancy -attracting a growing number of researchers but still far behind the established field of philosophy of science. This essay reports on a series of seminars held on the topic at the Royal Academy of Engineering which have demonstrated that it is an area rich with problems for both philosophers and engineers to tackle. These problems can shed light on existing philosophical questions, raise new ones and even have practical value for the engineer.
It is the second volume in a series that emanated from a workshop on Philosophy in Engineering that took place at the University of Delft in October 2007 and that began a continuing series of workshops named by the acronym IPET followed by the year of the workshop [1]. Prior to that, there had been three significant publications that had illustrated the value of pursuing the relationship between philosophy and engineering [2], [3] and engineering education [4]. The success of this 2007 University of Delft workshop led to IPET 2008 being held at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London. While the focus of both volumes is on engineering, necessarily many of the papers have implications for engineering education. It is not without significance that at the 2007 Frontiers in Education Conference, some members of the ERM Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) launched a special session on the philosophy of engineering education in the hope they could develop an interest in this dimension of engineering education [5]. In subsequent years, philosophy became a regular feature of both the Frontiers in Education and ASEE annual conferences, and many papers were published, including a substantial bibliography and review [6]. As a subject, it is represented in the ASEE by the Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy Division (TELPHE), who have published several handbooks on philosophical topics [7], [8].The editors of Philosophy and Engineering: Reflections on Practice, Principles and Process consider that one of its recurring themes is the role that philosophy plays in engineering education. In this respect has it been more successful than the deliberate attempt to do this at the ASEE and FIE conferences, which raises the question of whether the people who support those conferences can learn from this volume.The volume is divided into three parts: 1) Reflections on Practice; 2) Reflections on Principles; 3) Reflections on Process. They are preceded by a foreword in which there is an exchange between the editors and the distinguished historian and philosopher of technology Carl Mitcham. The editors put a number of questions to Mitcham. Among them was "To what extent do you agree with a remark by Pieter Vermaas [9] to the effect that the philosophy of engineering had successfully emerged as a sub-discipline?" No paper in the present volume seeks to answer this question in the way that it has been answered for engineering education by Froyd and Lohmann [10] or Williams [11] for the practice of engineering. However, these authors sought to show
This special issue of ISR brings together a selection of papers the majority of which were presented at the first international Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering, held at the University of Delft in November 2007. The purpose of the workshop was to encourage connections between philosophy and engineering and indeed between philosophers and engineers. Although philosophy of engineering is a subject gaining a strong foothold in the philosophical terrain, the workshop was not devoted purely to philosophy of engineering but gave a forum for the wider reflection by engineers on their discipline and the exploration of ethical issues in engineering. This is an area that has also been explored by The Royal Academy of Engineering, where between 2006 and 2008 a series of seminars was held on philosophy of engineering, aiming to encourage communication between engineers and philosophers and to stimulate reflection on engineering research and practice.The papers here make a case for engineering as a subject that both gives rise to issues for philosophical reflection and as an art that would benefit from the input of wider reflection. The focus of the papers is divided between philosophy in engineering, and philosophy for engineering. Those in the first group identify and explore the ways in which philosophical issues arise in engineering practice, or draw comparisons between engineering practice and philosophy. For example, Marco Fahmi's paper discusses how the problem of vagueness appears in the context of software engineering and discusses the software engineer's proper attitude to dealing with vague predicates. Priyan Dias's paper brings out commonalities between systems engineering and the philosophies of Michael Polanyi and Martin Heidegger. Fernand Doridot's paper discusses whether there are internal relationships between the two disciplines; whether engineering shares features common with philosophy. Farber et al. discuss the epistemological challenges created by systems engineering, and consider the value of certain tools in providing knowledge and understanding of complex systems. Papers of the second kind focus in the main on ethical issues and do so for the purpose of improving the way that engineering is taught or practised, having a normative goal in their sights and a call for action in their tone. Paul Durbin's piece in particular argues for the need for engineering to reorganise itself to appropriately address the ethical challenges of engineering. Luca Consoli argues that adopting a virtues-ethics approach might lead to the development of ethical codes that scientists and engineers identify with more closely.In this opening piece, I will look at both themes from the meta-level, by considering the question of whether and why engineering is an apt topic for reflection. Is there
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