ASLAKSEN, Erik - The Engineering Paradigm

International Journal of Engineering Studies.
ISSN 0975-6469 Volume 5, Number 2 (2013), pp. 129-154

© Research India Publications
http://www.ripublication.com/ijes.htm
The Engineering Paradigm
Erik W. Aslaksen
Gumbooya Pty Ltd

3 Gumbooya Street, Allambie Heights, NSW 2100, Australia
[email protected]
1. Introduction
In order to understand what something is, it is often beneficial to study its history, its
development over time. Understanding how it came to be what it is today, the issues
and problems that arose underway, how they were solved, and how this influenced the
further development, all lead to an understanding that goes deeper than what is
provided by the immediate appearance presented today. This method of historical
analysis was applied to great effect by Thomas Kuhn and presented in his seminal
work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1996), and the title of the present
paper reflects the inspiration provided by that work.
Kuhn showed that, for long periods of time, science works within a set of accepted
truths and norms, which he called the scientific paradigm, and that it is the existence
of this stable framework that, to a great extent, underpins the efficiency of scientific
work. However, these periods of stability are interspersed by relatively abrupt
changes to the paradigm, brought about by two factors: the number of experimental
results that cannot be explained within the existing paradigm reaches a critical value,
and a new theory is put forward that explains all or most of these results.
As we shall see, engineering has some similar characteristics. This has also been
argued by E.W. Constant (Constant 1987), who called it a “culture of technology”,
expressed both in large-scale organisations and institutions and in the career
committmemt of individual practitioners, that creates technological momentum, the
propensity of technology to develop along previously defined trajectories unless and
until deflected by some powerful external force or hobbled by some internal
inconsistency. But adapting this picture of evolution to engineering requires us to
take account of the significant differences between engineering and science.
Basically, whereas science is about discovering the truth of our understanding of
Nature, engineering is about using that understanding for beneficial purposes. And
whereas the paradigm within a domain of science can change relatively rapidly,
caused by a single revolutionary new theory, such as the heliocentric view of the solar
system, Newton’s laws, Darwin’s theory of evolution, relativity, and quantum
mechanics, changes within engineering are more gradual. In particular, is not that
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existing engineering knowledge and works are found to be incorrect and need to be
discarded; it is that new knowledge and works are added and then, over time, replace
the old for reasons of greater cost-effectiveness. Old engineering is like General
Macarthur’s old soldiers (Macarthur 1951).
Another difference was pointed out in (Grimson 2012). Science can be
considered to be convergent in the sense that succeeding theories about an aspect of
Nature converge on the truth about this aspect, “science proceeds relentlessly to
gradually hew away the rough walls that imprison truth”. But in engineering it is
difficult to discern any such convergence over time, and even at a given point in time
there may be several different solutions to a given problem. As an example, take the
problem of handling (storing, transmitting, copying) information: from hieroglyphs on
stone tablets to bits on individual atoms and from semaphores to teleportation, at any
point in time a number of approaches were implemented and subjected to further
development, and it is not possible to identify any final solution; the development is
open-ended and divergent.
Finally, and at the core of the current investigation, there is another difference. If
we define science as explaining and understanding Nature, then the concept of science
is timeless, and we can ask such questions as “What is the first evidence we have of
scientific activity?” and “What were the beliefs and norms guiding scientific activity
at such and such a time?”. But, as we shall see in the next section, the concept of
engineering itself only emerged over a long period of time through a development that
is, to a certain extent, still ongoing today, and so the concept of an engineering
paradigm cannot be that of an environment in which engineering takes place, but
rather the place and nature of engineering itself within a wider field of human activity.
That wider field of human activity may be described as the modification of
elements of the natural surroundings in order to meet a need; what we shall call a
purposeful modification. It started when humans developed the mental ability to
recognise the possibility of such a modification and the physical dexterity to realise it,
and the purpose included giving visual pleasure or increasing one’s self esteem
(painting, ornaments, sculptures), worshipping a deity (monuments, temples),
providing shelter (dwellings), increasing mobility (roads, bridges, boats), providing
food (traps, weapons, agriculture), preparing, serving, and storing food (bowls, pots,
plates), and so on. This is roughly what the ancient Greeks identified as techné, and
we shall investigate the development of that field of activity to the present day with
the aim of identifying and defining an evolving subset of those activities as
engineering. However, in order to study the evolution of engineering, this subset
must be described as consisting of two parts: one that remains constant and allows us
to identify it as engineering, we might call this the essence of engineering, and one
that describes the evolution, which is the engineering paradigm mentioned above, and
we do that below. But before doing that, it is appropriate to note how the word techné
(which in Greek is spelt τεχνη, and would actually be texnh with Latin letters) has
been used in the literature on engineering. According to the dictionary (LSJ 1940),
the word means “art, skill, cunning of hand”, and so, in the broadest sense, applied to
any creative activity and the products that arose from it. When then engineering
became a recognised profession and the subject of philosophical enquiries as to its
The Engineering Paradigm 131
content and purpose, much of the early work was in the German language, and the
word Technik was adopted to refer to both the activity of and artefacts produced by
engineering. (An important work in this regard is the book Streit um die Technik,
(Dessauer 1956), to which we shall make reference further on in this paper.) As a
result, the word technology took on this same meaning in much of the work in the
English language on philosophical enquiries related to engineering. But within the
engineering profession itself, technology means the knowledge and resource base
engineers apply to create new works; the activity of creating the works is called
engineering. No engineer would say that he is “practising technology” or “doing
technology”. But, depending on the context, engineering encompasses technology, as
in “studying engineering”. Understanding these two uses of “technology” is
important, because while a philosopher may talk about the ethics of technology or the
effects of technology on society, this makes little sense to engineers, as they see
technology as completely value-neutral; it is only the application of technology that
can have an effect and has ethical aspects.
2. Historical Analysis
2.1 Framework
The history of this wider field of human activity is documented in numerous books
and papers, and covers a range of aspects, such as personal, technological,
economical, social, philosophical, and religious. To analyse this extensive amount of
information, we need to keep our objective in mind, and extract information which is
relevant to that objective. That means limiting not only the subject matter of the
information, but also the level of detail; it just needs to be adequate to support the
conclusions we want to make in Sec. 3. That is the purpose of the analysis in this
Section 2, and as our objective involves studying the evolution of a certain subset of
the activities within this wider field, a first step is to define a suitable timeline, and the
following will be used:
Period Approximate duration

Ancient Until 500 BC
Classical 500 BC to 400 AD
Medieval 400 to 1400
Renaissance 1400 to 1650
Enlightenment 1650 to 1750
Industrial Revolution 1750 to 1850
Production 1850 to 1980
Information 1980 and ongoing
This timeline has a decidedly “Western” look. That should not be taken to imply
that activities we are interested in took place only in the West; on the contrary, up
until about 1650 technology in China was equally advanced as that in Europe. The
reason for adopting this timeline is, firstly, because the literature available in English
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on the history of technology and engineering generally adopts this, or a similar,

timeline and, secondly, because the significant rate of change of engineering as a
profession, and therefore the focus of our analysis, has taken place after 1650 and
mainly in the West.
Then we need to define the characteristics of what we are looking for; that is, the
essence of engineering and the engineering paradigm. The essence of engineering,
i.e. that which identifies an activity as engineering, is that it
 is creative; there is an element of novelty or innovation in the product of the
activity. Simply replicating something is not engineering, it is a production
process that involves one or more trades.
 is rational; it employs a reasoning based in part on science and in part on
heuristics (previous experience). together forming an identifiable knowledge
base. Art also involves rational application of previous experience (although in
some modern art this may be difficult to realise), but it relates to the process of
producing the artwork, not to the artwork itself.
 is useful; in the sense that it results in products that, when used, provide services
that meet needs expressed by parties external to the activity. Artworks provide
their service (awakening a particular emotion) in themselves, without any active
performance on their part.
The last criterion should not be interpreted as defining the value of engineering to
be purely instrumental and have no intrinsic component; however, the existential
value of engineering, as was discussed in (Floorman 1996), exists only in relation to
the engineering community.
The aspects of engineering that change as engineering develops and that we shall
take as defining the engineering paradigm, are
 the existence and extent of different activities within the wider field of activities;
 the relationships of engineering to the rest of these activities; and
 the nature and extent of the knowledge and resource bases that support
engineering.
The following books provide the primary source material for our analysis: (White
1962), (Cuomo 2007), (Hart 1926), (Hill 1984), (Parsons 1968), (Rolt 1962),
(Sprague de Camp 1963), (Turner and Goulden 1981), and (White 1962); a short
synopsis is also given in (Aslaksen 2012). Some of the material is contained in more
than one of these books, and similar information is often stated repeatedly in one
book, but in different contexts, so it is impractical to identify each instance of
information underpinning each individual outcome of the analysis, but where a
particular item of information is quoted, the specific reference is given. And, of
course, our purpose is not to comment on or develop further insight into history as
such, but to use the existing material to discern the extent and nature of engineering
activity.
The development of engineering and technology took place in various regions of
the world; first in isolation due to a lack of communications, later one can trace the
migration of a particular technology from one region to another. The regions of main
interest up until about 1850, and for which most archeological and historical data is
available, are the Far East (China), India (the Indus Valley), Egypt, the Middle East
(the Fertile Crescent), and Europe (as exemplified by the Roman Empire).
Developments in the Americas were generally of lesser extent during this time, and
not of significant importance for our purpose, and areas like Australia and the Pacific
islands did not develop much of relevance. However, from 1850 onward, the United
States rapidly became a main driver of the development of engineering and
technology.
2.2 The Ancient Period

Our knowledge of human activity in the time prior to written pictorial records, say,
4,000 BC, arises from archeological and anthropological work. Flintstones cleaved to
give a sharp edge or point and used for various purposes, such as cutting and shaping
wood, spear- and arrow-heads, and scraping hides, textiles made from plant fibres,
ornaments made of various materials, and remnants of pottery all provide evidence of
activities that display all three of our defining characteristics, although the claim to a
knowledge base is tenuous and restricted to reproduction rather than to innovation.
But the proportion of this type of activity compared to the daily struggle for survival
was minute, and it was not until the development of agriculture and the establishment
of settled communities, around 8,000 BC, that a degree of specialisation and
allocation of labour specifically to what we can identify as engineering activities,
according to the above definition, took place.
Initially, the work would have been carried out by individuals or small groups of
individuals who we would characterise as craftsmen. They produced tools to shape
materials, used these to produce various constructions, such as dwellings, rafts and
boats, irrigation channels, and simple bridges, and they produced useful artefacts out
of wood, clay, and metal for daily use. These innovations and inventions were
possibly more the result of trial and error, or simply serendipity, than of any rational
development, but in the course of this work they developed a knowledge base which
was transmitted, for most of the period, verbally and by example from generation to
generation, with any written or pictorial record of this knowledge base appearing only
towards the end. Significant additions in this period included the smelting of metals
(copper, bronze, and iron) and the manufacture of glass. However, as the
communities were small and communication between them very limited, this
knowledge base was geographically dispersed and its overall rate of growth very low.
As the communities grew in size, so did their ability to support a workforce not
engaged in food production, and with that their ability to undertake large construction
works. This introduced two new aspects to engineering. Firstly, for small artefacts,
such as a new lock mechanism, a new type of hinge, a better plow, or a better
wheelbarrow, the person who had the idea was also the person who produced the
artefact, and in most cases the mental work of envisaging the new item and the
physical work of producing it would have been so closely interwoven as to be
indistinguishable. But with the increase in size, the object to be constructed had to be
envisaged more or less in its entirety and described in some form prior to the start of
construction, both to get approval from the relevant ruler and in order to be able to
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assemble and direct the workforce. That is, the activity we call design became
discernable as a separate activity, but the designer and the builder would generally be
the same person; there was no need for a formal interface between the two functions.
And the design description, in whatever form it was, a drawing or a model, would
have been used mainly by the designer/builder, our embryonic engineer, himself in
order to ensure the consistency of his instructions to the workforce.
Secondly, such large projects introduced the aspect of management, both of the
workforce (sometimes slaves) and of the materials supply (timber, ropes, suitable
stone, clay for bricks, etc.). For the larger projects in the latter half of the ancient
period, such as the pyramids in Egypt, the Palace of Minos on Crete, and the large
irrigation works in China, the management (i.e. the planning, resourcing, and
controlling) of the construction process would have been the main task, and it is fair
to say that throughout the whole of this period the development of engineering was to
a large extent the development of the construction process, the ability to undertake
major projects. This is also evidenced by the fact that the names associated with most
of these large building works are the names of the professional administrators or
government officials that planned the project, not the engineers that designed the
works (Turner and Goulden 1981, p. xvi).
2.3 The Classical Period

In this period the development of engineering advanced more rapidly than in the
ancient period, both because of the accumulating knowledge base and because of
improved communications (travel, trade) that disseminated this knowledge beyond its
location of initial discovery and development, and we can distinguish two components
of this development. One was driven by the rise of science (in particular mechanics),
both theoretical and experimental, resulting in the invention of a large number of
tools, devices, and mechanisms; the beginning of what we might characterise as
mechanical engineering. Examples would be various types of water wheels
(overflow, underflow, vertical), various types of water elevating mechanisms (pumps,
Archimedes’ screw, bucket chains), clocks, improved gear wheels, surveying
instruments, tools for agriculture, and also process installations, such as mills, kilns,
and furnaces. In some cases these devices appear to have been developed more as a
demonstration of the physical principle and as a demonstration of a possibility, rather
than as a product for sale, and the reasons would have been the cost of the material
(e.g. steel was produced by hand forging) and the lack of a production technology that
would have made the production cost-effective. In one respect, however, the
advancement of engineering in those days displayed a similarity to what it is today; it
was driven in part by the desire for military superiority. The development by the
Greeks of the catapult, in various forms, led to what has been called “the Hellenistic
revolution” in warfare, and led to lamentations about the demotion of hand-to-hand
combat (Cuomo 2007, p. 41) (probably much the same sentiment as the Taliban have
towards unmanned drones).
The other component was the emergence of a more sophisticated approach to the
design and building of structures and civil works, as well as to the management of this
work, driven by the demand of the large empires (Chinese and Roman) for roads,
canals, viaducts, sewers, walls, and fortifications. This resulted in a construction

industry that was organised for efficiency and that delivered consistent results. It was
no longer acceptable for the individual builder to rely solely on his own knowledge
and experience; the body of knowledge started to contain generally accepted
processes and designs. An outstanding example of this is the design and construction
process for major Roman roads.
At the end of this period, engineering activities had taken on a more distinct
character and had become somewhat structured. While it was still true that the
designer and the builder was often the same person, the design was recognisable as a
separate activity with an interface, in the form of a drawing or a process description,
to the building of the object. And the design activity itself had become diversified,
whether it was the design of the object or of the associated production process;
significant disciplines included mining and the smelting of ore and metals,
civil/structural works and the production of cement and concrete, the design of
buildings (i.e. architecture), and shipbuilding. In all of these there was an increased
influence and content of science, but there was also a belief in Nature’s active
involvement, sometimes coupled with religion, such as the blessing of a new
enterprise and calling on divine support, and there was a strong artistic influence.
Design was a holistic expression of man’s creative abilities, not just of the rational
aspect. This was most visible in the separation of the design of buildings from the
design of e.g. a road or a drainage channel: form and function were balanced in the
former, whereas the latter was focused on the functional. Architectural styles (or
patterns) developed, such as the Roman villa, the Vastu Shastra mandala in India, and
the distinct Chinese architecture. Further evidence of the importance of design is that
we now find the names of designers, such as Agrippa and Appollodorus, or Shih Lu in
China, associated with their works.
An important aspect of the emergence of an engineering profession was the
increased level of literacy and the availability of writing material; bamboo and then
paper in China, and papyrus and then parchment in the West. The knowledge base
became documented, and the ability to use and contribute to this knowledge base
became a hallmark of the engineer as opposed, say, to the craftsman. Perhaps the best
known example of such documentation is a set of ten books on architecture, De
Architectura, by Marcus Vitruvius (Vitruvius 20 BC), a Roman engineer and
architect, who served for many years as a military engineer, including in Caesar’s
Gallic campaigns. Of particular interest is Chapter 1 of Book 1, entitled “The
Education of the Architect”, which emphasizes the broad scope of the education,
which should include arts, science, practical knowledge of materials and construction
methods, and more, but also recognises that the depth of some of these more auxiliary
areas needs to be limited; a first recognition of the enduring problem of balancing the
engineering curriculum!
Another well known example are the various books and treatises by Archimedes,
of which only some have survived. Archimedes was principally a mathematician and
physicist, but also an engineer who invented novel mechanisms, such as the spiral
water pump. It is interesting to contrast him with Vitruvius, because the contrast
between the Greek scientist and engineering designer and the very practical Roman
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engineer illustrates the different attitudes of the Greeks and the Romans to
technology. Besides the noted military applications, the Greeks were mainly
interested in technology as a demonstration of the laws of Nature and in the
philosophical questions arising from the relationship of technology to society,
whereas the Romans were not very interested in theory and took a pragmatic approach
to engineering.
Finally, it is worth noting the importance of government institutions in both China
and the Roman Empire. In China the majority of engineering was concentrated in
several organisations under the direction of the imperial government, including the
Imperial Workshops, the Arsenals, the Office of Works, and the General Water
Conservancy, and while the high degree of organisation was initially beneficial, it
turned into a rigid and bureaucratised system that a thousand years later made
technological innovation and progress almost impossible. In the Roman Empire much
of the engineering was organised within or in association with the military and
developed mainly to meet the needs of the expanding colonisation for housing,
fortifications, water supply, sanitation, and communications. These large
concentrations of people engaged in engineering activities would have contributed
significantly to the rate of development of the body of knowledge and to the
recognition of a certain coherence and common basis for these activities and thereby
sowing the seeds for engineering as a profession.
2.4 The Medieval Period

The thousand years from 400 to 1400 would turn out to be effectively wasted years as
far as the progress of engineering in Europe was concerned, although existing
methods and devices, such as various types of water wheels, continued to be
employed and developed to some extent. There were a number of factors that
conspired to make this so. First of all, the collapse of the Roman Empire and its
dismemberment and destruction through the incursion of both Mongols and Germanic
tribes meant the end of the state-sponsored and organised Roman engineering. For
example, public sanitation in Paris at the end of the period was inferior to that of
Rome at the start of the period. Then the rise of the Christian church, with its focus
on life after this and its opposition to science and to education and intellectual enquiry
outside its control, led to the loss of much of the knowledge base, although
architecture flourished in the form of numerous chuches, such as the Hagia Sophia,
Rheims, Amiens, Notre Dame, and Canterbury Cathedrals. And the small states and
fiefdoms that now made up the western world did not, individually, have the
economic power to pursue major engineering projects, and anyway spent much of
their energy fighting each other or the Muslims, although again architects benefitted
by building numerous castles.
China maintained its national integrity, and engineering continued to advance, but
at an ever diminishing pace, due to the rigid social system. Many major hydraulic
works (canals),roads, and bridges were built in this period, and a number to
engineering inventions were made. But due to the turbulence on its western borders
there was little or no communication with the West, so that such major Chinese
engineering developments as paper and cast iron took a thousand years to reach the
West. The only exception to this dismal state of affairs (from an engineering point of
view) was a result of the rise of Islam and the establishment of the Arab Caliphate (or
Arab Empire). Islam was not adverse to science, and Arab rulers encouraged
scientific research, with the result that significant progress was made in mathematics,
astronomy, physics, chemistry, and medicine. As part of this effort Arab scholars also
translated many of the Greek texts, and it is thanks to this that this knowledge was
preserved through the medieval period. But aside from applications of this scientific
effort into medical practice and to agriculture, including the construction of pumps for
irrigation and mills for grinding grain, the Arabs were not particularly interested in
using the advances in science to progress engineering; their mode of transport
remained riding on horse or camel, so there was no great need for major roads and
bridges, and the heritage of the nomadic lifestyle left its imprint on their society.
However, towards the end of this period, there was a change in attitude towards
Nature; it was no longer seen as only something one had to accept, but also as
something one could exploit by active intervention. Mining and metal processing and
the use of water and wind power were the main areas of activity, and along with this
activity came the increased confidence in the ability to understand Nature; the
properties of materials and the actions of the forces, and on the basis of this
understanding the ability to determine how best to exploit them. An expression of
this new confidence is the statement by Roger Bacon in De secretis operibus, around
1260: "Machines may be made by which the largest ships, with only one man steering
them, will be moved faster than if they were filled with rowers; wagons may be built
which will move with incredible speed and without the aid of beasts; flying machines
can be constructed in which a man may beat the air with wings like a bird; machines
will make it possible to go to the bottom of seas and rivers." The only thing he
missed was space travel.
2.5 The Renaissance

There are many differing and controversial views of this period in history; what
caused it, why it originated in Florence, how much of a discontinuity it was, and how
influential it was in shaping the different areas of activity, such as science, art,
government, commerce, education, etc. However, as far as engineering is concerned,
its significance is undisputable, because from this time until the 20th century, the
development of engineering is located almost exclusively in the western world, i.e.
Europe, England, and America (mostly the United States). And it is not the actual
advances in engineering, although they were significant, that are of greatest interest; it
is the tremendous outburst of creative and intellectual effort. It was as if a pent-up
reservoir of creative energy suddenly burst forth; the classical knowledge and focus
on philosophical enquiry were rediscovered (partly through Arabic translations), and
science, art, architecture, and engineering, combined and separately, produced works
of unprecedented beauty, functionality, and complexity. Well known people and their
works that fall in this period include Leonardo da Vinci (Mona Lisa, Last Supper, and
numerous note-books on engineering, art, medicine, and science, although mostly
published only much later and therefore, unfortunaltely, of relatively little practical
importance), Michelangelo (David, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica), Vesalius (On
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the Workings of the Human Body), Luther (Reformation), Machiavelli (The Prince,
The Art of War), Pico della Mirandola (Oration on the Dignity of Man), Brunelleschi
(Dome of the Florence Cathedral), Brahe, Copernicus, Galilei, Kepler (all produced
major works in astronomy), Gutenberg (printing with movable type) and Francis
Bacon (New Method).
In engineering, some major developments in this period included the following:
 Improvements in manufacturing, both in the sophistication of the design of the
manufactured items, and in the accuracy of the manufacturing process itself.
The latter was driven, to a large extent, by the demands of clock-making; clocks
became the model for accuracy and improvements in technology, going from
water clocks to mechanical clocks, and within these from weights to springs as
the energy source, and with pendulums as the time-keeping element.
 The first examples of standardisation, such as in gears (for clocks) and screws.
 The emergence of production machines, such as an early nail-making mill in
Nüremberg (Turner and Goulden 1981, p. 159).
 New designs based on the improved understanding of physics, such as the
suction pump.
 Mining developed into an industrial process, with proper design of both the
excavations and of the equipment used for ore transport and for dewatering, and
with the introduction of blasting.
 Textbooks became more readily available, such as Agricola's De re metallica
(15xx) on mining and metallurgy, and two books on mechanical engineering,
Theatrum Instrumentorum et Machinerum (1578) and Le diverse et artifiore
machine (15xx), by Agostino Ramelli.
 De re metallica (1556), and Le diverse et artifiore machine (1588).
In this period, engineering and architecture became reasonably clearly

distinguishable, although some people, like Leonardo da Vinci had the title of senior
military architect and general engineer when he was employed by Cesare Borgia.
Architects developed a distinct style by reviving and extending elements of Greek and
Roman architecture, and designed buildings of various sorts, such as cathedrals and
churches, chateaux, fortifications, town halls, and other government buildings,
whereas structural engineers designed bridges and industrial structures, such as
furnaces, kilns, hoisting towers, piers, and the like. The evolving difference between
architects and engineers makes it possible to perceive the appearance of a few
characteristics of engineering that would become more sharply defined in subsequent
periods, as we shall see. The first is that, while architecture was closer to art and
therefore architectural works were much more readily identified with individual
architects, engineering works were often more in the nature of creative applications of
a body of knowledge and more closely circumscribed by the required functionality, so
that the creative aspect was not readily visible to the general public. Secondly, the
creative and artistic aspect of an architectural work (the vision) would generally be
the work of a single person, whereas the creation of engineering works were often the
result of teamwork, with each member contributing his special knowledge and skill.
Thirdly, this period saw the beginning of private industry. While outside of the major
government enterprises, such as works for the casting of cannon or shipbuilding, most
private activity was still in the form of small craft shops run by a few family
members, some of these now grew to a size where they could afford some serious
investment in facilities and equipment and, most importantly, in the development of
new processes and products. Significant industries included the spinning, dyeing, and
weaving of wool and silk, mining, clay products (from bricks to porcelain), metal
casting (with cast iron rapidly becoming more common), brewing, and printing. As a
result, there was a developing market for engineered products, such as pipes, tanks,
fittings, valves, pumps, shafts, bearings, different types of wheels, and tools of all
sorts, and with it a demand for people who could design these products.
The fourth, and for the emerging profession maybe the most important
characteristic was the change in its relationship to its environment, brought about by
the emerging industrialisation of that environment. Up until the Renaissance, the only
engineers that could be identified as such were the civil (including structural)
engineers. They were employed by government bodies to design and manage major
public works. The people undertaking other engineering work (mechanical, mining,
and metalurgical) were generally identified as tradespeople, such as clockmakers,
millwrights, coopers, smiths, etc, and worked mostly within the confines of their
guilds. But with the emergence of engineered products and the importance of product
design, the engineer (as the creator of these products) started to become disassociated
from the guild structure. A product, such as a pump or a crane, would require skills in
casting, forging, metalworking, and woodworking, and pumps were required in
different industries, e.g. mining, brewing, dyeing, etc. So, while the guilds continued
to keep their grip, to varying degrees, on the workers (brewers, weavers, bakers,
stonemasons, etc) for several centuries, the people engaged in engineering activities
started to become identified by the nature of those activities (mechanical,
metalurgical, etc) rather than by the industry in which they employed them, even
though they might originally have been trained in a trade, e.g. as a millwright, as there
was not yet any formal engineering education available.
2.6 The Enlightenment

For engineering, the most significant development in this period was the rise and
influence of science. The rediscovery of classical texts on topics such as mechanics,
mathematics, and geometry, as well as the translation of texts from Arabic on these
and other subjects, including medicine and chemistry, and then the dissemination of
these works through printing in the Renaissance period, had provided a foundation
from which scientific enquiry and discovery could take off. The Royal Society of
London and the Académie des Sciences in Paris were both established at the
beginning of this period, and the belief in reason and investigation, as opposed to
mysticism and religion, led to numerous advances in philosophy and science and,
above all, to an increased confidence in human intellectual ability and the value of the
individual. Knowledge based on science started to replace the lore of the tradesman,
and calculations started to supplement the experience-based judgement, initiating the
separation between engineering and the trades. The scientific activity brought with it
a demand for better instruments and measuring devices, which in turn supported the
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production of more complex industrial products. Again, clocks were the yardstick for
engineering precision, but printing with moveable type also placed more stringent
demands on the precision of the associated equipment.
Coupled with this increase in knowledge, understanding, and capability came an
increase in the size and sophistication of industrial enterprises, with plants supplying
such products as alum, lime, bricks, glass and soap, and a Swedish engineer and
industgrialist, Polhem, constructed a rolling mill for producing wrought iron that
supplied a significant part of the European market, and this same enterprise also
produced standardised gears for clocks (Turner and Goulden 1981, p. 244). This
development brought with it the need for capital investment, thereby sowing the seeds
for a separation between the owner/business man and the tradesman/engineer.
2.7 The Industrial Revolution

Just as the political, social, and economical conditions came together in Florence
around 1400 to provide the tinder for igniting the Renaissance, so a number of
conditions in England around 1750 came together to provide the basis for the
Industrial Revolution and, with it, a tremendous boost for engineering. Technology
(i.e. the engineering knowledge and resource bases) had reached a point where it was
effectively looking for applications. England’s role as a supplier of manufactured
goods to its colonies was creating a demand for greater output and providing the
capital for investment in industry. England had the best patent system in the world,
and government bureaucracy and social impediments to new enterprises were both
significantly less than on the Continent. Finally, an abundance of coal and iron ore in
close proximity (as well as the need to reduce the consumption of charcoal) provided
the resources for the two hallmarks of the period: steel making and steam power.
As with the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution soon spread beyond its place
of origin (although the English were, of course, more keen to export the products than
the technology), to the Continent and, in particular, to the newly independent United
States of America.
As a profession, engineering started to organise itself, with the Society of Civil
Engineers being formed in London in 1771. Here “civil” meant as opposed to
military; the founding members included two surveyors, an architect, a lawyer, and
four millwrights. The main purpose of this Society seems to have been as an interface
between industry and government; for the development of technology the
concentrations of engineers in the various significant enterprises, such as Boulton and
Watt’s Soho workshops were more important. Due in part to its development into a
select industrial-political “dining club”, the Society was replaced by the Institution of
Civil Engineering in 1818, and by the end of the period it had about 800 members,
many of which were associated with the by then very important railway industry.
Other countries followed suit, and by the end of the period we find the Verein
Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) in Germany, the American Society of Civil Engineers
and Architects in the US, and the Civil Engineers Society in France. This period also
saw the appearance of formal, university-based education for engineers, with the
founding of L’ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1794 being the first (although it was
preceded by L’ecole Des Ponts Et Chaussées in 1747) and, in many ways, the model
for those that followed. By the end of the period most “industrialised” countries had
higher education in engineering in one form or another; a glaring exception was
England (but not Ireland and Scotland), the cradle of so much of engineering, where a
practice-based training was preferred until the 1870s.
2.8 The Production Period

The name of this period (which has no significance outside of this paper), from 1850
to 1980, is meant to highlight what was, for the engineering profession, one of the
three most significant characteristic of this period – the advent of mass production of
technical artefacts. This impacted the relationship between engineering and (the
consumer) society, and also changed the role of the engineer in industry. Instead of
being one of the main players, if not the main player, in creating new products, the
engineer became just one of many cogs in the industrial machine, together with sales,
marketing, legal, human resources, management, and others.
The second significant characteristic was (and still is) the increasingly close
connection between engineering and science and mathematics, which has influenced
the engineering profession in a number of ways. Firstly, it led to engineering
sometimes being characterised as “applied science”, thereby devaluing and diverting
attention from the main characteristic of engineering – as a creative activity.
Secondly, with the advances of science into new areas, such as electromagnetic
radiation, electron emission, ionisation, solid state physics, organic chemistry, and
biology, engineering was forced to undergo an increasing specialisation in order to
absorb and process these advances into its own foundations. Thirdly, the advances in
mathematics and computational techniques led to the increased use of mathematical
formalism and abstraction in the formulation of engineering procedures. Fourthly,
and as a result of the forgoing, what might be characterised as the scientific part of the
knowledge base of engineering expanded at a rate that left the profession in a quandry
regarding how to handle it and at the same time accommodate the other parts of the
knowledge base, those relating to practical experience and to the interaction with
society.
The third major development in this period which had a profound influence on the
profession was standardisation, both in the engineering itself, i.e. the activity, and in
its resource base, i.e. in the elements and materials from which the products are
created. Much of the design activity in engineering became a process of selecting a
combination of existing elements; it would be inconceivable to start designing bolts,
nuts, resistors, capacitors, semiconductors, steel sections, etc. when they can be
selected from catalogues. As a result, the profession became further subdivided, not
only into the various disciplines, such as civil, structural, mechanical, electrical,
chemical, and so on, but into layers or strata identified by their locations in the
process of converting raw materials, like silicon or steel, into end products, such as a
mobile telephone or a car. Clearly, the skills needed at each level differ considerably.
As a part of the industrial production process and subject to the same pressures of
cost-effectiveness, the process of engineering itself also became highly standardised.
Thousands of standards, from company standards to international ones, defined how
engineering had to be performed; the steps to follow, the documents and reviews to be
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completed at each step, the formats of the documents, and so on. Related to this
standardisation of the engineering process was the greatly increased influence of the
legal profession. It is not clear which one is driving which, it is a vicious circle, but
the result is that a great deal of effort goes into insuring that one has complied with
every condition in the standards (as specified in the contract) and any legislative
requirements rather than into any creative activity.
Two developments in this period are of particular importance to our analysis. The
first was that, with the advance of technology, the process of converting a design into
a physical object changed in nature from a traditional craft or trade into a number of
routine, but more complex activities that had to be formally taught in the course of a
four-year apprenticeship or some other form of training. Often this training was tied
to a particular machine, such as a complex numerically-controlled machine tool, or to
a particular process, e.g. in the chemical industry. The result was that the engineer,
who might in previous periods have been initially trained in a trade, such as a
millwright, became somewhat separated from the end product. Design and
production became separated by a formal interface, in the form of documentation of
various forms (drawings, specifications, data files, etc.).
The second, which was a consequence of the standardisation, was the appearance
of two additional professions - technician and drafter - taking some of the routine
work off the engineer. The technician was present in the manufacturing and
processing industries; the drafter (further subdivided into tracer and design drafter)
was found in all industries, but particularly in the consulting engineering companies.
The technician was most often a tradesperson with additional training and/or formal
education, with the professional classification and requirements differing from
country to country.
2.9 The Information Period

In this period, in which we are currently located, the engineering profession is
experiencing the impact of further major development; comparable in its impact to the
rise of science in the previous period, but of a very different nature – the advent of
what only a few decades ago would have been unimaginably cost-effective computing
power and the associated rise of a whole new branch of engineering, software
engineering, and its product, software, with software engineering now said to account
for more than half of all engineering effort. Computers and their software are being
embedded in more and more products, from inexpensive toys to cars (40 % of the cost
of a top-of-the range BMW is in its electronic systems), and, as an example, an
industry like mining has been transformed from a rough and ready, rip-and-blast
activity into a highly sophisticated, computer-controlled operation. And the impact
on everyday communications and data processing can be seen everywhere, with the
proliferation of smartphones and tablets.
For engineers (but for other professions as well), whether software or hardware
engineers, the most significant aspect of this change is that the computer (and its
software applications) has become not only the main communications interface, but
also a production tool; taking over an increasing proportion of the routine engineering
work, such as calculations, optimisations, and generating production documentation.
This is allowing engineers to devote more of their time to the creative aspect of
engineering and increase their productivity, but not to the extent one might expect.
The main reason for this is that while the software applications become increasingly
more powerful and sophisticated, the knowledge and the formality required to use
them also increases, so that engineers spend a lot of their time coming to grips with
how to use the packages. Mastering a powerful application can be comparable to
learning a new language; to that is added the effort to keep up with the frequent
version changes.
3 Paradigm Shifts
3.1 A Particular View of the History of the Engineering Profession
In sec. 2.1 we defined engineering as an activity that meets three criteria, which
together constitute what we called the essence of engineering, and then we defined the
engineering paradigm as consisting of three aspects of this activity. When we now
investigate how that paradigm has changed over time, on the basis of the historical
analysis in Sec.2, then that is obviously a very particular, or restricted, view of the
history of engineering. Many other important and interesting aspects of engineering
can be studied in a historical context, such as the influence of engineering on GDP, on
social conditions, and on health; also the role of engineering in warfare, how it
influences security and economic stability, and so on. To understand why we have
chosen the three particular aspects to define the engineering paradigm, we refer again
to Kuhn’s work on the scientific paradigm. That paradigm is the intellectual
environment in which science operates, made up of a set of accepted theories,
assumptions, and methodologies under which ongoing work is carried out. This
paradigm is generated by the scientific community itself, and the ability to generate
and maintain such a paradigm is an important characteristic of the scientific
community. But an equally important characteristic is the ability to change the
paradigm when certain conditions arise. The first ability ensures the viability of the
profession as a cost-effective contributor to society at any point in time, the second
ability ensures the long-term relevance.
The engineering paradigm, as we have defined it, is the environment in which
engineering (again, as we have defined it) takes place and, as we shall demonstrate
presently, it has also changed over time, albeit much more gradually than has been the
case with science. But, as with the scientific paradigm, the changes are driven by
engineering itself. By being performed, i.e. applying the existing technology,
engineering generates new technology, and these additions to the technology require
changes to the paradigm in order for engineering to be able to continue to apply the
technology cost-effectively. However, as we mentioned earlier, because science is
about ideas, the scientific paradigm is contained within the scientific community
itself, whereas engineering, in order to be useful, needs to operate in an external,
physical environment, essentially a part of industry, so that the engineering paradigm
is of a different nature to that of science. And, in particular, whereas in science the
reason for a change, i.e. the new theory, is different each time (e.g. heliocentricity,
gravity, evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics, etc), we shall suggest that in
engineering the reason for a change is always the same.
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Now, in the case of science, it is impossible to foresee what the next paradigm
change will be and when it will take place. But, because of the above difference in
nature, the change in the engineering paradigm has a certain predictability, and
examining that will form the conclusion of this paper.
3.2 The Historic Changes to the Engineering Paradigm

In the ancient period it is unclear (or unknown) how the engineering activity was
performed. When an inscription says “so and so built this”, this person was generally
a high-ranking government employee and may have been mainly an administrator or
project manager and had other persons engaged to do the engineering work. In any
case, it is reasonable to assume that for most of the period and in most places
engineer, architect, and craftsman were indistinguishable as professions and that the
work that could be identified as engineering, in the form of an embryonic design
activity, was performed as an integral part of the building work, with no formal
interface to the rest of the work.
There was also no reason for a professional distinction to develop. There would,
of course, have been significant differences in importance and reputation, both within
a project and within society, due to such factors as personal ability, family wealth and
connections, training opportunities, and so on, but the technology (knowledge and
resource bases) was so limited that there was no need for any specialisation.
However, one distinction within the wider field of purposeful activity was present
already in this period and was, indeed, already present well before this period, and
that is the distinction between engineering and art. The basic distinction is that the
products of art fulfil their purpose by just being, whereas the products of engineering
fulfil their purpose by being used. Of course, many objects are the product of both
engineering and art, such as a ceramic bowl decorated with various scenes or patterns
In the classical period we can perceive the beginning of professional distinctions.
Many of the works are what we would call architecture in that, besides the function of
the works, the form and structure was to convey a sense of harmony, beauty, and awe
of a deity or a ruler. In other words, the works were partly art works, and the persons
creating them would have to have not only a good knowledge of the building trade,
but also artistic talent and a broad knowledge of the beliefs, symbols, and customs of
their society, and these are the requirements described by Vitruvius (op.cit.). But
there are also many examples of works we would call engineering, and within these
also a separation into civil/structural works, such as canals, drainage works, water
supply tunnels and viaducts, and roads, and mechanical devices, such as pumps,
clocks, waterwheels, windmills, grain mills, and catapults. To the extent that we
know the people involved and their roles, there was now a fair, if not complete,
distinction between architects and engineers, and the reason for this (as well as for the
distinctions within engineering) was that the extent of the technology made it
uneconomical for a person to acquire it all, given the lack of formal engineering
education opportunities and the relatively slow rate of knowledge acquisition
provided by “on the job” training. Of course, there were exceptions, and there
continued to be exceptions until modern times, but specialisation would be an
unavoidable consequence of the accelerating pace of growth of technology.
A related distinction that started to make its appearance, although to a very limited
extent, was the distinction between the architect/engineer and the craftsman. There
had, of course, always been the distinction between the designer/builder/manager and
the labour required to produce the result, be it a canal, a pyramid, a viaduct, or a
temple, but now the relative complexity of the works and the precision required would
have resulted in certain formalisation of the various skills, such as mason or smith,
and a distinction between the people possessing them and simple labourers. This
would be the beginning of the guild system.
An important, but apparently very poorly documented development in this period
is that of industries. Considering e.g. the amounts of bricks and concrete used by the
Roman engineers, and their emphasis on efficiency, there must have been significant
production facilities for these products (including their components). These, as well
as major mining sites, must have had some of the organisational and process aspects
and problems found in modern industry, and there must have been people that gained
experience and skills in handling them. They would not have been readily identifiable
as civil, structural, or mechanical engineers, but they performed engineering work and
contributed to the development of technology, and this emerging duality of designing
a product and designing the process to produce the product would develop into
perhaps the most significant characteristic of engineering.
In the medieval period the main change to the environment in which engineering
work took place was the increased organisation of crafts into guilds. As a result, a
distinction between engineering and craft developed in that an engineering project
would normally involve more than one craft, so that, even if an engineer was trained
in a particular craft, his work would elevate him above the craftsman and free him
from the restrictions of the guild.
The reawakening of the interest in and acceptance of science in the Renaissance
period, as well as the rise of printing, started a transformation of the knowledge part
of technology from being based exclusively on experience to having a theoretical
component. The engineer now started to know not only what worked, but also why it
worked. This was an essential change, as it allowed the development of new
technology to be based on a reasonable prediction of what would work, rather than on
a pure trial-and-error approach. It not only increased the creative productivity of the
engineer significantly, but this relationship to science served to distinguish the
engineer even more from the craftsman. And instead of the secretive knowledge base
of a guild, engineering developed a free exchange of knowledge, out of which rose the
patent system. Instead of restricting the knowledge, the patent system placed some
restrictions on the commercial use of the knowledge.
Engineering became a more distinct activity, both with regard to architecture and
to the crafts and trades. It also became more and more associated with industry and
manufacturing, rather than being mainly concerned with construction, so that the
previously mentioned duality of product and process became increasingly obvious and
important.
For engineering, the Enlightenment period strengthened the ties to science and
saw the further development of the scientific content of the engineering knowledge
base. In particular, the design and production of increasingly complex machinery for
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the manufacturing industry led mechanical engineering to be more clearly identified

as a separate discipline within engineering; a development that would be completed in
the next period.
The Industrial Revolution period resulted in a significant change in the
engineering paradigm. By the end of the period engineering was firmly established as
a profession, with the civil and mechanical disciplines defined and the foundations for
the further development of the internal structure in place. Formal engineering
education at university or equivalent level had been introduced in several countries,
while at the same time the tremendous increase in demand for engineering had
highlighted the need to improve the cost-effectiveness of the engineering process
itself. The result was a stratification of the engineering workforce into academically
trained engineers, technicians (under various labels), draftsmen, and tradesmen or
craftsmen. The details and extent of this stratification varied considerably from
country to country and also between industries, but the new paradigm was
unmistakeable.
The production period resulted in a number of changes to the engineering
paradigm, some of which had been initiated in earlier periods, and some new ones. In
the former group was the further elaboration of the stratification of the engineering
workforce. The term “engineer” became more or less synonymous with the
academically trained technical person, the professional engineer, and the
requirements on obtaining the associated title became circumscribed in detail within
each country. Driven both by the advances in science and by the engineering activity
itself, technology continued its exponential growth and led to further specialisation in
the form of engineering disciplines, i.e. civil, structural, mechanical, electrical,
electronic, and chemical, and within these even further specialisation into such areas
as automotive engineering, railway engineering, high voltage engineering, and nuclear
engineering.
As the name of the period indicates, it was not only that the variety of products
increased greatly, but the numbers of each product manufactured increased at a rate
that would have been unimaginable at the start of the period. This mass production of
consumer goods had a significant impact on the engineering profession. Firstly, in
addition to the innovation and design of a new product, the design of the production
process, including the facility with all its infrastructure and the individual
sophisticated and partly automated machine tools, became a major part of engineering
work and led to an emphasis on and development of such additional components of
technology as reliability, maintainability, and human factors, and with it a further
specialisation within the profession. Secondly, the increasingly complex
manufacturing machines and processes required highly trained and skilled operators;
it was no longer possible for engineers to create the actual products they designed.
While engineers used to have some training in basic manufacturing operations, it was
not reasonable to expect an engineer to be able to operate a complex, numerically
controlled machine tool. Thus, the separation of the engineer from the rest of the
engineering workforce became more pronounced and the interface more formalised.
A new feature related to this rise of mass production was the need to maintain this
vast collection of engineered products, and in response there arose a whole new
classification within engineering, maintenance engineering, and a whole new group of

trained and skilled personnel – maintenance technicians.
A new development was the availability of a vast collection of mass produced
standard construction elements. As a result, the major part of engineering design
became a process of selecting the most appropriate combination of such elements;
only a minority of engineers were actually involved in creating new elements and had
a need for the associated detailed physics, chemistry, and materials science
knowledge. This led to another dimension of specialisation, and an ongoing issue for
engineering education.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the engineering paradigm, this period
changed the role of the average engineer from a creative and intellectually stimulating
one to that of a cog in the vast industrial complex, “turning the crank” of what became
an engineering production process. This diminishing of the role of the engineer and
what can only be described as a waste of a precious resource took place at a time
when the application of technology was coming under increased scrutiny and
criticism for its lack of concern for social and environmental values.
The period in which we currently find ourselves, the information period, is
witnessing a development which has all the hallmarks of the beginning of a shift in
the engineering paradigm comparable to that which took place in the Industrial
Revolution period. It is driven by two main factors. One is the advent of cost-
effective computing power and the associated new branch of engineering – software
engineering. Software engineering is basically different from traditional engineering,
with a very different technology (Aslaksen 2009). The knowledge base is more like a
branch of mathematics and formal logic, and the resource base consists of reusable
software modules. Reliability and maintainability take on completely new forms, and
so on. Within engineering there is now a new major interface, between these two
branches of engineering, and a corresponding need for integration, which is being
provided by the new activity of systems engineering.
But, of greater significance in the context of this paper is the increasing
importance of the computer as a tool for engineers; it has become the essential tool in
all areas of engineering and the equivalent of the machine tool in the engineering
production process mentioned above. This tool is, on the one hand, increasing the
productivity of engineers considerably, but, on the other hand, it is changing the
intellectual content of what engineers do. A considerable part of engineers’ time is
spent on learning the language and rules associated with each new application and in
keeping up with the frequent version changes. And once learnt, that language and
those rules do, in many applications, dictate how the design must be performed. It is
through this standardisation, with its ease of communication and data exchange, that
much of the efficiency gain is achieved, but it also provides a serious disincentive for
creative thinking.
The other main driver is the recognition that the engineering profession does not
occupy a position in society that would allow it to realise its full potential with regard
to creating value for society. This is due partly to a deficiency in engineering
education, and partly to industry’s use of engineers, as it developed during the
Production period and mentioned above.
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3.3 Analysis
From the history of the development of engineering and, in particular, to the role of
the professional engineer and the environment in which this role operates, there
emerges a fairly clear picture of what we defined as the engineering paradigm. If we
recall the three components of the definition, we can obtain the following overview of
the development:
Period Other activities Relationships Technology

Ancient Arts and crafts Integrated with Knowledge
engineering; no transmitted verbally
significant and by example.
professional Resources limited to
distinction timber and stone,
with some metals
and simple hand
tools
Classical Engineering, architecture, Arts are separate Written records of
arts and crafts from engineering, designs and of
architecture and scientific input
crafts start to appear. Resources
separate include bricks and
concrete, iron/steel
becomes more
available
Medieval Engineering, architecture Architecture Slow increase in
and crafts/trades becomes partly knowledge base;
separated from improvement of
engineering, existing designs.
crafts/trades form Increase in mining
guilds. technology.
Renaissance Engineering, crafts/trades Engineering and Expansion of
architecture are now knowledge base due
generally separated. to upsurge in science
Engineering distinct and printing.
from guild system,
but informal (verbal)
interface. Increased
importance of
design.
Enlightenment Engineering, management, Engineering no Further interaction
crafts/trades. Growth of longer interact with with science,
industries creates a crafts, but is closely improvement in
distinction between crafts related to the trades fabrication methods
and (industrial) trades. (as fabricators). (precision,
standardisation).
Revolution Engineering disciplines, Design becomes a Rapid increase in all

management, capitalist, separate engineering aspects of
industrial trades, start of activity, with a technology.
draftsman/technician formal interface Formalisation of the
classification (drawings) to the technology through
trades. education
Importance of (textbooks).
business activities.
Production Engineering disciplines Close involvement Very great expansion
Management with mass of the technology; in
Technician/technologist production and its particular, of the
Drafter management, resource base in the
Trades/operator interaction with form of standard
business activities construction
(sales, marketing) elements.
Information Software engineer Increasing social An increasing
Hardware engineer concern about the proportion of
Systems engineer effects and technology is
directions of becoming related to
engineering. software.
In terms of all the activities involved in an engineering project, the proportion

performed by engineers has been continually decreasing, while the intellectual content
of that proportion has been continually increasing. The need for unskilled labour as a
source of mechanical energy was gradually replaced by power sources designed by
engineers, and within the skilled labour there was a growing division between manual
skills and intellectual skills; between training and education. This initial change, and
the subsequent further specialisation of manual skills into trades and of the technical
activities into levels of intellectual content on the other hand (drafter, technician,
technologist, engineer) and into disciplines (architecture, civil, mechanical, etc.) on
the other. Because of industrialisation, activities such as business management, sales,
marketing, and legal support have taken on an increasing role in engineering projects,
and through its interaction with these activities engineering has become more
“commercialised” and become more of a commodity, as was pointed out in (Galloway
2008). And, finally, the size and duration of many engineering projects, whether it be
a manufacturing project, like the development and production of a new car, or a
construction project, such as a new railway, meant that the impact of the engineering
activity on the outcome was greatest in the early phase of the project. As a result, a de
facto further stratification was introduced into engineering; the conceptual, strategic,
and holistic work as opposed to the detailed, specialised work in the later phases,
which also has a certain component of “turning the crank”, as this work is often
highly circumscribed by standards. In effect, this amounts to a further stratification
according to intellectual content.
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In all of these changes to the engineering paradigm there has been, whether
explicitly or implicitly, one main principle: the quest for greater cost-effectiveness.
This principle is inherent in engineering due to its purpose of being useful, but is
reinforced by engineering being embedded in industry. It was discussed in some
detail by Dessauer, who called it “Ökonomiegesetz” (Dessauer 1956, p. 286). The
cost arises from the length and intensity of the education (both initial and continuing)
required to master a given part of technology; the effectiveness is determined by the
match between the engineers’ capabilities and the work assigned to them. The
specialisation and structuring of engineering into more and more, narrower and
narrower disciplines and sub-disciplines has been, to a large extent, a means of
containing the cost of education and training. The stratification of activities within an
engineering project according to the intellectual content of the work has been a
response to increasing the effectiveness; for example, it was not effective to have an
engineer operate the machine tool to produce the item he had designed, nor is it
efficient to have engineers operate the Computer Aided Drafting tools that produce
the drawings of their designs.
Our brief historical analysis identified a number of factors that have influenced the
development of the engineering paradigm, and they can be considered to fall into two
groups. One group contains those factors that led directly to a change in the paradigm
in order to maintain or increase the cost-effectiveness; they include such external
factors as the formation of guilds, the rise of science, and the development of business
as a separate, major discipline with its own body of knowledge, as well as the internal
factors arising from the inherent exponential growth of technology. The other group
contains those factors that had a more indirect or subtle influence, such as the
structure of the society (e.g. China in the period 1680 to 1911 or Japan prior to 1870)
and associated relative social standing of engineering profession,
philosophical/religious attitudes (e.g. return to nature, technology as environmentally
destructive, etc.), and local (national) economics (domination of specific industries,
such as mining or agriculture). It is this group of factors that results in local versions
of the paradigm.
3.4 Looking Ahead

Predicting the future is always fraught with uncertainty; however, based on the
forgoing historical analysis, and the identification of cost-effectiveness as the main
driver of paradigm changes, it is likely that we are at the beginning of a significant
paradigm change (or, to use the Kuhn metaphor, an engineering revolution). Central
to Kuhn’s analysis was the use of history to gain an understanding of what something
“is”; not “is” as in “current state”, but as in “nature” or “essence”. It is the thing that
evolves, the thing one can identify as remaining throughout the evolution, whereas the
paradigm contains the features that change and that thereby describe the individual
paradigms. In the forgoing we have identified the creation of value as the core of
engineering that remains throughout its evolution, and the position of the professional
engineer within the spectrum of actors in the field of engineering as the feature
characterising the engineering paradigm, There is a widespread opinion, both within
the engineering profession and without, that engineering is not realising its potential
for providing value to society. Engineering continues to produce innovative and ever
more advanced technology, but does this address the needs of society in the best way?
Given the extensive knowledge and experience of the profession, is it having an
appropriate influence of the direction of the development of society? Is current
engineering education optimised to today’s conditions and requirements? Does
industry’s employment of engineers make the best use of their abilities? These and
similar questions reflect a feeling that the contribution of the professional engineer to
society has slowed from its previous exponential rise; i.e. that its effectivness is not
what it could be.
If we consider the evolution of the role of the “engineer”, from craftsman and
builder of structures, through machinist, then practical engineer (or technician), then,
in the late eighteenth century, the emergence of the academically trained engineer,
and then the increasing specialisation in the following two centuries, this evolution
seems to have slowed or stagnated. In particular, when compared to the accelerating
increase in the body of knowledge. There is, in a number of countries, a distinction
between such actors within engineering as engineer, technologist, and engineering
technologist. Smith (Smith 1969) distinguishes between engineer, technician, and
craftsman, and Sporn (Sporn 1964) distinguishes between technician, technologist,
and engineer. However, such distinctions appear to have done little to change the
perception (and reality) of what an engineer is and does (Murphy 2012). This is
illustrated in Fig.1.
Engineer
Technologist
Drafter
Tradesperson
1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 2100
Figure 1 The development over the last six hundred years of one aspect of the
engineering paradigm, the structuring of the technical activities within engineering
projects by intellectual content (the vertical axis),
In Fig. 1, the vertical axis is intended to be a measure of the intellectual content of

the activities involved, or what we might call engineering’s value-creating potential.
152 author
It is composed of technology (i.e. the knowledge and resource bases) and of all those
surrounding, or additional intellectual capabilities that have been identified as crucial
enablers in the environment in which engineering takes place. All of these
components are evolving at an accelerating pace, hence the exponential character of
the curve. In particular, this is important for the engineer, as it is the creative and
innovative intellectual activity that is the hallmark of the professional engineer and
the part of an engineer’s work that creates the greatest value for society. This view of
the role of the engineer in society, its value-creating potential, and the obstacles to
fully realising it was developed at great length by Dessauer (op.cit).
In Kuhn’s description, a paradigm shift takes place in science when the body of
observations that cannot be explained by the current paradigm reaches a critical size
and a new theory appears that explains all or most of these observations. It is this
triggering effect that led Kuhn to characterise the paradigm shifts in science as
revolutions. Looking back at the history of engineering, the paradigm shifts have
been much more gradual and could not by any means be characterised as revolutions.
However, due to the accelerating pace of the changes to both technology and to
society this could be about to change. The body of evidence suggesting that the
current version of the professional engineer is not fulfilling the potential for value
creation has, as previously noted, been building with increasing rapidity over the last
couple of decades (and is corroborated in (Aslaksen 1996)), and a “trigger” that will
effect a paradigm shift could well result in something like a revolution. But while in
science the trigger is the acceptance of a new theory, in engineering the trigger will be
the demonstration that a new version of the professional engineer does result in an
increase in value creation. It is not enough to have a vision for such an engineer; it
requires the investment to actually produce such engineers (education) and to give
them the opportunity to realise their potential (industry), but above all it requires the
profession itself, as represented by the Institutions, to promote the change.
The comparison with science and with Kuhn’s work can also serve to bring into
focus the role played by the Institutions in changing the engineering paradigm. In the
case of science, the value, in the form of true scientific knowledge, is produced
directly by the scientific community, represented by its Institutions. In the case of
engineering, the value is produced only indirectly through industry. But the central
purpose of industry is to create financial gain for its owners, and industry’s view of
how engineering can best contribute to fulfilling that purpose does not necessarily
coincide with the definition of the value of engineering put forward in this paper. To
a certain extent, the difference between these two views is a reflection of what Marx
identified as the difference between “use-value” and “exchange-value” (Marx 1867),
or “what society pays for is not necessarily what society needs”. Therefore, whereas a
paradigm change in science takes place wholly within the scientific community, a
change in the engineering paradigm, i.e. the role of the professional engineer within
engineering projects, once articulated by the engineering community, requires
industry to accept and implement it. The Institutions should be the principal agents in
facilitating this acceptance.
What could such a paradigm change, or “engineering revolution” look like?
Based on the foregoing discussion, engineering activity would be concentrated in
what is today the “front end” of engineering projects. Understanding and analysing
the full extent of the problems, with all their interfaces to non-technical (economic,
legal, social, political) aspects. Using an in-depth knowledge and understanding of
technology to identify possible solutions and evaluating these, including with regard
to all forms of risk. Specifying the functionality and performance of selected
solutions. Developing and evolving the standards to which these solutions should be
implemented.
The implementation of specified solutions, the “production” part of the
engineering process, would be performed largely by a new professional group
combining the skills of drafter and technologist, utilising computers and software as
the new “production” tools. For example, the task of verifying that a detailed design
complies with the relevant standards and legislation could be performed completely
automatically by software. Also, all the routine tasks associated with managing the
engineering process, such as scheduling, resourcing, forecasting, etc. would be
performed by this group.
The formal part of the interface between the engineers and the technologists
would increasingly be in the form of models. The use of models and the number and
sophistication of the associated modelling software packages are on the increase, but
in order to suit this new structure of engineering they would need to reflect the
division of labour between engineer and technologist and to take into account the very
different purposes of the software in the two cases. In the case of the engineer, the
purpose of the software is to provide a cost-effective support for the intellectual
activity that produces the result; in the case of the technologist, the purpose of the
software is to produce the result, with the technologist in the role of dedicated
operator.
This paradigm change will require (or will force) significant changes to the three
entities involved. To academia, it will mean a rearrangement of the three components
of the syllabus: general engineering knowledge (mathematics, physics, chemistry,
biology), specialised engineering knowledge (increasingly narrow specialisation
necessitated by the growth of technology), and knowledge about the environment in
which engineering has to operate in order to be effective. To the profession,
represented by its various professional bodies, a reorganisation to better recognise the
value-creating potential of the engineer, and to industry, a more appropriate allocation
of work to capability.
References
[1] Aslaksen, E.W (2009), Why Software is Different, Newsletter of the Systems
Engineering Society of Australia, No.48, July 2009.
[2] Aslaksen, E.W. (1996), The Changing Nature of Engineering, McGraw-Hill
Australia.
[3] Aslaksen, E.W. (2012), The System Concept and Its Application to
Engineering, Springer.
154 author
[4] Constant, E.W. (1987), The Social Locus of Technological Practice:

Community, System, or Organisation?, in The Social Construction of
Technological Systems, Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch (eds.), The MIT Press,
1987.
[5] Cuomo, S. (2007), Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity,
Cambridge University Press.
[6] Dessauer, F. (1956), Streit um die Technik, Verlag Josef Knecht
[7] Floorman, S.C. (1996), The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, St. Martins
Press
[8] Galloway, P.D. (2008), The 21st Century Engineer, Am. Soc. Civil Engineers,
Reston
[9] Grimson, W. (2012), The Open-endedness of Engineering Design: A Review of
a Number of Approaches Describing Design with Particular Emphasis on
Phenomenology, Forum on Philosophy, Engineering and Technology,
University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, November 2-4, 2012.
[10] Hart, I.B. (1926), The Great Engineers, Methuen & Co. Ltd.
[11] Hill, D.R. (1984), A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times,
Open Court Publishing Company.
[12] Kuhn, T.S. (1996), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Univ. of Chicago
Press, 3rd ed.
[13] LSJ (1940), Dictionary of Ancient Greek, Liddell, Scott, Jones, Clarendon
Press, also available online at www.perseus.tufts.edu.
[14] Macarthur, D. (1951), “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away”, address to
joint session of Congress, 19 April 1951.
[15] Marx, K. (1867), Das Kapital, vol. 1, sec. 3, 1867.
[16] Murphy, M, M. Dyrenfurth, and G. Bertoline (2012) Examining the Identities
of Engineers, Technologists and Engineering Technologists, in Abstracts of
2012 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering and Technology, Beijing, China.
[17] Parsons, W.B. (1968), Engineers and Engineering in the Renaissance, The
MIT Press.
[18] Rolt, L.T.C. (1962), Great Engineers, G. Bell and Sons.
[19] Smith, R.J. (1969) Engineering as a Career, McGraw-Hill, 3rd ed.
[20] Sporn, P. (1964) Foundations of Engineering, Pergamon Press.
[21] Sprague de Camp, L. (1963), The Ancient Engineers, Doubleday & Company,
Inc.
[22] Turner, R. and S.L. Goulden (eds) (1981), Great Engineers and Pioneers in
Technology, St. Martins Press.
[23] Vitruvius, M. (20 BC), De Architectura, available at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20239/20239-h/29239-h.htm
[24] White, L.T. (1962), Medieval Technology and Social Change, Oxford
University Press.
[25] Williams, R. (2008), Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology,
Society, and the Imagination, The MIT Press.

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International Journal of Engineering Studies.

ISSN 0975-6469 Volume 5, Number 2 (2013), pp. 129-154

The Engineering Paradigm

Gumbooya Pty Ltd

Period Approximate duration

on the history of technology and engineering generally adopts this, or a similar,

2.2 The Ancient Period

2.3 The Classical Period

canals, viaducts, sewers, walls, and fortifications. This resulted in a construction

2.4 The Medieval Period

2.5 The Renaissance

In this period, engineering and architecture became reasonably clearly

2.6 The Enlightenment

2.7 The Industrial Revolution

2.8 The Production Period

2.9 The Information Period

3.2 The Historic Changes to the Engineering Paradigm

the manufacturing industry led mechanical engineering to be more clearly identified

classification within engineering, maintenance engineering, and a whole new group of

Period Other activities Relationships Technology

Revolution Engineering disciplines, Design becomes a Rapid increase in all

In terms of all the activities involved in an engineering project, the proportion

3.4 Looking Ahead

1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 2100

In Fig. 1, the vertical axis is intended to be a measure of the intellectual content of

[4] Constant, E.W. (1987), The Social Locus of Technological Practice:

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