Engineers: Bridging the Gap between Mechanisms and Values

ABSTRACT

Engineers managed to attract the attention of thinkers to their profession and become the protagonists of philosophical discourse. This article explores whether the philosophy of engineering can offer any persuasive help toward a definition of the engineer’s ‘essence’, and considers whether a lack of agreement on this definition is really a problem. This study demonstrates the need to involve the context of social theories both in analyzing the prerequisites of the philosophical consideration of the concept ‘engineer’ and in the socially significant reasons for attention to this concept. The novelty of my approach lies in considering the phenomenon of ‘technopreneurship’ within the framework of the philosophy of engineering.

KEYWORDS:

• Philosophy of engineering
• technopreneurship
• professional ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The first, to equate designing, building, or the like with engineering makes distinguishing engineers from other technologists impossible. Second, to equate engineering with designing, building, or the like gives a misleading picture of what engineers in fact do (Davis 2009a).

2. Edwin Layton has criticized this position (Layton 1986, 111).

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) under Grant number 18-011-00920 ‘Revolutionary Transformations in Science as a Factor of Innovation Processes: Conceptual and Historical Analysis.’

Notes on contributors

Elena E. Chebotareva

Elena E. Chebotareva has a PhD in philosophy and is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy of Science and Technology in the Institute of Philosophy at the Saint Petersburg University. She teaches Philosophy and History of Science and focuses on topics in the Social Epistemology and STS issues. She is currently carrying out research on the revolutionary transformations in science as a factor of innovation processes. She is a board member of Russian Society for History and Philosophy of Science. [email protected]