DELFT University of Technology was founded in 1842 as a Royal Academy for the education of civilian engineers, for serving both nation and industry, and of apprentices for trade. It is now in the top rank of universities worldwide and it hosted the first-ever international gathering in 2007 between philosophers and engineers. A tradition was started, and since then similar events have been held at quite regular intervals at various places around the world.
This year the forum for philosophy, engineering, and technology returned to Delft. The theme of the conference was to consider how, as technology advances, it brings other challenges in the form of unintended consequences. Those attending at Delft in 2023 would have seen a huge change in the University’s campus if they had not returned there since the original WPE conference of 2007. The campus has moved out of town, the long walk1 leading to it is a wide flat boulevard between towering shiny new blocks of all branches of engineering.
Setting off from the old town in the morning, it is easy to see the direction to take towards the university. The mighty tide of students all on cycles whirring along the broad level cycleways lead the way. It’s a mass transit system in action, everyone is dressed for the day ahead, not for a road race. Something that seems to be passed by and un-noticed, along the big walk (in the way that a statue or an inscription might be) is the circle of latitude 520o 00’ 00”N.
The point is, recent changes in the weather pattern due to a change in climate may no longer relate to the patterns of storms in the past, so is it worth debating which method of analysis is better?This was marked out precisely on the ground in 2018. It runs diagonally across the footway, the cycle path, the tramway, and the open grass at the side. This has been done in a precise narrow band of white tiles, within a paved strip.
Neat tiles are the signature of the roads of Delft. As well as this narrow line there are marker posts showing how the European tectonic plate has shifted through history, going right back to the year AD zero, where the marker post is 19m away from that Euclidian line of infinitesimal width marked by the tiles. It raises some interesting philosophical questions similar to those discussed at the conference, namely, with a relatively small amount of available data sometimes complicated mathematical analyses are done with big resulting technological implications.
Tectonic plate theory is recent, and it is difficult to say where the surface of the Earth may have been 2,000 years ago.
A paper at the conference, which grappled with a similar conundrum, was one jointly presented by a philosopher and a civil engineer, and it was on the very topical subject of river flood predictions. The only tools we have to do predictions like these are those of probability theory and recorded measurements of river flows and rainfall from the past.
It is assumed that all the recorded rainstorms (on which flood studies are based) have followed a random distribution in terms of intensity and duration.
If we analyse this data assuming it to be a normal or Gaussian distribution2 in the accepted way, or by a more rigorous modern analysis we will arrive at two slightly different answers. The point is, recent changes in the weather pattern due to a change in climate may no longer relate to the patterns of storms in the past, so is it worth debating which method of analysis is better?
Values are not static
It is strange how ideas get around; it is a known fact in publishing that almost identical manuscripts can sometimes arrive at the same time on an editor’s desk. That has happened from times well before modern communications and the internet. Perhaps it is a natural phenomenon similar to the way a flock of birds wheeling across the sky can change direction, it cannot be explained.
‘Values’ is a term meaning a set of relatively stable beliefs about what is good or desirable. These things change due to social moirés, technology, or a combination of both. Ideas as well as statues get toppled. For example, wind turbines generating electricity are seen as good in terms of sustainability, but it was not realised that the noise caused to people living nearby might cause nuisance and even impair mental health.
A dam necessary for a water-retaining reservoir may well have been objected to when it was constructed. Farmers and others always resist having their ancient homelands flooded. Technology changes, and the way that water storage and distribution is organised also changes and some reservoirs have now become redundant. Proposals to remove the dams and drain the reservoirs are objected to because of the loss of the aquatic habitat that was formed by building the dam.
A conference paper examining the case for hydropower in the United States looked at similar problems involving activists and democracy and how values are seen differently. Earlier concepts of a good engineering scheme were probably just based upon how much power could be economically extracted and managed from a range of flows in a river.
A dam necessary for a water-retaining reservoir may well have been objected to when it was constructed.
Social media has also been recognised as something else that illustrates how we should take seriously the matter of changing values, and how freedom of speech has to be balanced against the deliberate spreading of lies. Data about the use of communication systems can become subjective and turn into matters of opinion. Engineers generally deal with physical measurements of parameters with calibrated instruments in a mathematical way, so design data is fully objective when it comes to physical construction.
It is a different matter when designing technological things which affect the way we think. Physical health monitoring by calibrated instruments which measure a person’s blood pressure or heart rate is straightforward and does not raise any major questions about whether or not is right to do it. The measurement of some of the more elusive parameters indicating mental health is a much more fascinating question. Monitoring the way someone uses a mobile phone might well give valuable signs of a mental deterioration, and it could be an aid to righting it, but how is the possibility of causing harm in other ways to be avoided?
The meaning of words and the way they change is a branch of philosophy. If the word ‘data’ is being used to describe something that is not measured in accepted units, there is no way of stopping its being used in that way. It will go on to be called data. It is like the evolution of technology, it happens, there is no grand plan.
Values of engineering projects
In the field of civil engineering the Robert Moses debate centres around the unusually low bridges which were constructed in the 1950s on the new highway leading to the fashionable beach at Jones Beach New York.
Monitoring the way someone uses a mobile phone might well give valuable signs of a mental deterioration, and it could be an aid to righting it, but how is the possibility of causing harm in other ways to be avoided?
It is said that these were set deliberately low to deter travellers by bus reaching the beach, as they couldn’t pass under them. It seems very strange to have ever considered a policy of low bridges as good civil engineering, so it is probably best discounted as a change in the value of anything worthwhile3. Values are dynamic, and it needs great foresight in design to be able to cater for them.
Academic philosophers of technology have an important role in education because that is an important way of strengthening the philosophical component of engineering.
Formal philosophical contributions are, however, being made to codes of practice, for example the IEEE 7000 is a guide to those constructing advanced systems of electronic engineering. (Information Technology). Focussing solely on avoiding physical harm is not enough, designers should aim to understand the values of those who might use what has been built4.
It is very difficult to see how engineering projects like these intricate systems will behave in reality. The application of IT methods to aid any professional practice is challenging, professionalism is so difficult to define but it is obvious when it is missing. In the first place, the overall constraint which applies to all technology is that any project has to pay its way to exist.
As technological things become more advanced they become hugely expensive to make. Ideally, those who need to use technical things should design them, so they work well in practice. Computing is becoming more complex and it is becoming specialised and sometimes very remote from practitioners.
Perhaps it has always been a property of technology that those bringing their ideas into reality, by actually making the things in their minds’ eye have always had to rely on tools made by others. This dependence has become more acute as the things manufactured have become more advanced. Perhaps too the gap will widen, as technology may only advance with the tools available. It might be increasingly difficult to finance the production of new tools for unproven ideas.
Engineering is in some ways like surgery within the medical profession, it a craft supported by science5. This involves interdisciplinary exchanges of ideas and co-operation.
Ethical technology
The teaching of ethics as part of an engineering course is a conundrum in itself. It raises questions, for example, are engineering ethics different from medical ethics? Or perhaps is ethics just one subject which applies to all professions.
In the field of civil engineering the Robert Moses debate centres around the unusually low bridges which were constructed in the 1950s on the new highway leading to the fashionable beach at Jones Beach New York.
It is interesting that the word ethics is used in the world of technology, and not the word morality. Probably this is because engineering has always been seen as a secular subject, and morality has a religious tone about it, but morality is much wider and more mysterious than ethics, and may be a pointer to the difference between engineering, and technology, which is the plain application of science.
An interesting parallel was drawn between the famous dilemma faced by Albert Schweitzer and his medical work, and a dilemma facing the civil engineers of today. Dr Schweitzer’s principle was that ethical behaviour is an over-arching duty summed up simply as a respect for life (usually translated as reverence for life).
The difficulty was in his work treating patients he often had to destroy other living things, like microbes carrying disease. This was a seemingly contradictory thing to do, which is not possible to generalise. Today the essential materials of concrete and steel remain the mainstays of civil engineering, but they are some of the main things which are contributing to the biggest problem recognised at the moment by the civil engineering profession, namely, production of carbon dioxide now known to cause harm to the atmosphere, and the climate. This too is a problem that cannot be generalised, the complexities of each case must be also dealt with individually.
Unforeseen in design
The neglected topic of ‘maintenance’ is beginning to receive academic attention, and it is very much related to changes in a realisation about the need to review the current function of the structure or the project that has been constructed.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco California was completed in 1937, but ever since it was constructed, it has been modified to suit changing needs, not because it has decayed or failed to meet its original specification. Traffic and other needs have increased and those have had to be met. Some more subtle changes have happened which were not foreseen, a chilling fact is that a permanent safety net system has now had to be fitted under the parapets to save lives of a rising number of victims of suicide.
In other ways technical advance itself can mean that a piece of engineering can no longer do what it was intended to.
A safety net to protect those building it at time the of construction was seen as a burden on construction costs but it was insisted upon by the designer, it was never seen as something that would be necessary in daily use.
In other ways technical advance itself can mean that a piece of engineering can no longer do what it was intended to. Telephone systems had to be modified shortly after they were first installed, because mass production brought lower costs and large numbers of users overwhelmed the first networks. They have been continuously modified, and now revolutionised to cope with the way people can now communicate with electronics.
None of this was foreseen when they were first designed. An ability to foresee problems that current design codes don’t cover is a gift, it is like innovation, it only happens rarely.
Politics and engineering
Technology and politics are intertwined. Very few civil engineers are able to actually be involved with the commissioning of headline projects, that will always be something for politicians.
For the political ones, the philosophical questions are exceedingly complex and overlap into many areas. Professional boundaries between civil engineers, architects and other new specialist professions may well change, ways of communicating and providing standard solutions to problems have certainly had a hand in that. Engineers in other fields like manufacturing are involved with a different sort of politics within large companies.
Civil engineers who are actually concerned with the details of designing and constructing projects may find that many of these philosophical questions can be looked at in practical ways.
Big statements like United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) certainly catch the mood of the day, they map out ideals, and they value the construction and operation of projects by how little CO2 is produced. Politicians support studies like these, it gives them a way of grading things to be good or bad in terms of numbers, usually they only have the numbers describing financial costs to help them decide what to do. (Political judgments of things that are difficult to measure, or are intangible will always divide opinion.)
The aims of statements about ideals are liable to find their way into rules and regulations, bringing the disadvantage that they may become to be seen as constraints, not goals. It is a standard philosophical problem faced by rulers since ancient times. It raises questions in the minds of individual members of the profession today, namely, how to act to put these sorts of principles into action to reach these goals?
It is interesting that the professions, in general, and, as a whole, usually only react to, and then follow the reforms of the things that control their practice. Professional people probably have enough on their plate to actually get their list of jobs done, and to comply with the rules of the day, they have real clients or patients to immediately serve and to do the best they can for in the hurly-burly of their world. Civil engineers who are actually concerned with the details of designing and constructing projects may find that many of these philosophical questions can be looked at in practical ways.
Case studies are already being published showing how the harmful ecological effects of construction have shown that the more efficient the design, the less harm it causes. There is no magic about it. The results are not surprising.
Engineering efficiency probably brings an instinctive humanity with it as well, that is important and so difficult to define. Perhaps individual professional engineers should keep to the traditional principles of efficient design and construction, as this often brings benefits that are also unforeseen.
Dennis Gedge MCInstCES, Consulting Engineer
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1 At the far end of the long walk is ‘building X’, where the conference was held, it is strange that Bletchley Park was also Station X.
2 Surveyors also rely upon the probability theory of random distribution of the limitations of observational accuracy of physical instruments, or random errors. The theory of ‘least squares’ has been proved mathematically correct, it is used effectively in practice.
3 The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York 1974, by Robert Caro. As many bus travellers were from minorities the low bridges have been seen as an expression of racism.
4 IEEE 7000 TM-2021, a guide published in the USA by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. An unintended Risk in Engineering Design: Ignoring the values of Your Users. The Institution of Engineering and Technology (formerly the Institution of Electrical Engineers) is probably the UK equivalent to IEEE in USA.
5 Dr Roger Kneebone of Imperial College London, is a surgeon who now directs the Centre for Engagement and simulation Science (ICCES). This is a creative research group bringing together clinicians, educationalists, computer scientists, psychologists, social scientists, design engineers, and experts from the visual and performing arts to realise the potential of simulation to enhance human health. Simulated surgical operations can safely try theoretical things in practice.