The existential pleasures of engineering

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1. TomOwensJul 2026
   Dave Farley's book is really good, and I'd highly recommend it.

   However, I do have an issue with his focus on applying science in the definition, even though it doesn't come across in his final conclusions. In the history of engineering, that's a relatively new development. It started, to some extent, in Europe in the 1700s, but it really took off in the 1920s and exploded in the United States after World War II (1940s-1950s). It culminated with the Report of the Committee on Evaluation of Engineering Education (the Grinter Report) in the mid-1950s.

   This isn't to say that science isn't important to engineering, since it absolutely is. Science provides knowledge used to better understand the world being changed by engineering. But there are also plenty of examples of engineering going ahead of science - the steam engine, the airplane, generative AI. We didn't fully understand the governing rules before the technology existed.

   Any definition of engineering needs to be broader. Ferguson (Engineering and the Mind's Eye), Florman (several works, but primarily The Existential Pleasures of Engineering), and Vincenti (What Engineers Know and How They Know It) all explore ways in which engineering can't rely on science alone. I think Koen (Discussion of the Method) puts it best, where the application of science is one heuristic that engineers may choose to draw upon.

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2. lambdaphagyJan 2024
   Florman's _The Existential Pleasures of Engineering_.
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3. jdownerMay 2018
   "The existential pleasures of engineering" by Samuel Florman.

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1203186.The_Existential_...

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4. zbJan 2010
   They do but they iterate when solving the problem, usually on paper. If they make a design mistake and it's in production or prototype phase it's much more costly to address. And because of this development cycles are longer and a lot more time is spent upfront.

   This I agree with. Most engineers would kill to have the kind of feedback cycle that we have. (Disclaimer: my experience, such as it is, is with electrical rather than mechanical engineering.)

   Solving real life problems, like this, thoroughly is worlds away from what most programmers enjoy - creating.

   This I disagree with. Of course (mechanical) engineers enjoy creating - for example, read Florman's Existential Pleasures of Engineering.

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5. ctrlpJan 2024
   Samuel Florman wrote some interesting books reflecting on engineering and the humanities

   The Civilized Engineer The Introspective Engineer The Existential Pleasures of Engineering

   A few others I haven't read

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