Abstract
“Philosophy is the art of reflecting on that what we think we
already know”
This quote from my supervisor Harry Kunneman, starkly
addresses the problem of any interdisciplinary enterprise, such as
is the case when philosophy meets engineering and vice versa.
It is hard to reconsider the obvious, or at least those issues that
our training and experience have made us believe that are obvious
[1], such as reliance on formal, preferably mathematical, truths in
the case of engineering versus the continuum of critical stances
based on established scholastic traditions in philosophy; or the
focus on tackling actual problems in a clearly defined context,
versus reflection on potential risks that may or may not become a
real (future) threat.
There are also many rules of practice that are taken for granted;
the truth of progress at lightning speed that many fields of
engineering face, and of course also by the philosophers who
reflect on the consequences of such progress. One group is
desperately trying to keep up to date with the steady stream of
publications on specific issues on their field of interest, while
others just as desperately try to understand the long term social or
ethical consequences of the rapidly expanding products of these
areas –complex systems theory, neural science, genetic
engineering and many, many more.
These matters are the current focus of an interdisciplinary team of
researchers at the University for Humanistics (UH) in Utrecht, the
Netherlands. In this team, sponsored by the NWO, the
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research through their
program “The Societal Component of Genomics Research” [2],
the problem of communications between various stakeholders in
the genomics debate is being tackled by a motley crew of
scientists, with contributions from philosophy to engineering (one
researcher, with a background in computer science and
electronics, engaged in a research for a PhD in Humanistics). This
project, “Towards a Lingua Democratica for the Public Debate
on Genomics” [3] both addresses, as experiences the problems of
interdisciplinary research –miscommunication, established, often
‘coagulated’ mindsets and expectations on what ‘the other’ should
know or should consider scientifically viable. The notion behind
the central theme in this project, the Lingua Democratica, is that
the problem between any inter- or cross disciplinary
communication is not specifically a problem of distinct scientific
languages –such that a lingua franca could capture-, but is already
manifest at more fundamental levels. These levels range from
various dialects that can be more or less closed to others, occur at
intermediate levels where presuppositions, expectations, beliefs
and intentions are formulated, and eventually end at the level of
abstract relationships and interactions. These contributions may
help to enhance awareness of the strengths and limitations of the
individual stakeholders and hopefully provide means of a more
inclusive –democratic- approach to face the challenges of
genomics. The individual contributions of this project focus,
amongst others, on issues as the use of metaphors in science [4]
and various modes of scientific practices [5]. The specific project
that spawns this paper –the contribution from engineering- is
looking into various patterns that can be identified in the
interactions between stakeholders with different backgrounds and
stakes in an interdisciplinary micro-society.
This paper aims to introduce the current state of the engineering
contribution –evidently work in progress- that aims to ‘reverseengineer’
problems at the boundaries of two distinctly different
societies, for instance between engineering and philosophy, with
the tools that are available within engineering itself. It aims
explore the issues that one faces and argues that these problems
are similar to those which the maturing field of complex systems
theory faces.
Original language | American English |
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Title of host publication | Engineering meets Philosophy WPE |
Publisher | Delft University |
Number of pages | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 29 Oct 2007 |