Search

Under the influence of natural science, twentieth century philosophy departed from its Socratic heritage and increasingly isolated itself within the discipline. This new disciplinary way of doing philosophy produced a greater amount of professional knowledge and expertise, but it also separated philosophy from its broader social context. Since the mid-20th century, various efforts were made under a variety of banners to reconnect philosophical thinking with society, with field philosophy representing the most genuine break from the disciplinary paradigm. It advocates collaborative work and rejects philosophic jargon. It also shares much in common with a parallel Chinese approach called 'philosophy of gongcheng.' The philosophy of gongcheng is mostly initiated by top-level engineers, especially academicians with real political power, with the aim of enhancing the real-world engineering practices. This paper traces the roots of philosophy of jishu in China to reevaluate the appearance of philosophy of gongcheng, and exposes the differences between these two parallel transdisciplinary approaches. Working with engineers deepens the understanding of engineering practices and provides some fresh insights on previous philosophical theories. Both field philosophy and philosophy of engineering need to ask, is there only one way to do philosophy? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a longstanding belief that research should be a calling more than a job. How does this expectation shape the selection of future researchers? Specifically, undergraduate research experience is credited with increasing students’ success in science and engineering majors and their likelihood to choose careers in science and engineering; thus, how researchers select student laboratory workers has implications for the future population of researchers. After all, because research communities construct knowledge collectively, researchers’ identities and experiences crucially shape knowledge. This paper analyzes qualitative interviews with engineering professors and students about what they believe are the characteristics of a good researcher. Both groups describe the importance of a researcher feeling interested in and enthusiastic about research to be able to do good work. They also imply that good researchers must be assertive, such as by requesting jobs in laboratories. I suggest that these explicit and implicit expectations can create opportunities for implicit bias and unintentional exclusion and suggest strategies to mitigate these problems and promote inclusion for the next generation of researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking up the notion of engineering as social experimentation, this paper argues that engineering research laboratory directors have a responsibility to inform graduate engineering students who participate in their research projects of the potential broader social dimensions of those projects. Informing engineers-in-the-making of the broader social dimensions of the research they are learning to conduct would help ensure their future capacity to act as ethically responsible social experimenters. The paper also argues that graduate engineers have a right to be informed participants in activities that may have broader social dimensions than are recognized by formal research evaluation or educational processes. The process of obtaining the informed consent of graduate engineering students, if implemented effectively, would thus help ensure both their capacity to act as moral agents and their own moral integrity. Since the eventual outcomes of research can be uncertain, complex, and contested, most traditional institutional frameworks—such as principle-based codes of conduct and risk-benefit frameworks—provide an insufficient basis to inform engineers and citizens. Rather, we recommend an ongoing discursive process that explores a number of different actors, contexts, and scenarios, and that evolves with the social context of the engineering research in question. While this may seem burdensome to the engineering research process, it can be integrated directly into the group research meetings and mentorship activities that typically already go on. Moreover, it can actually be seen to benefit engineering practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite societal expectations that graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines integrate broader impacts into their professional activities, few of them actually receive any formal training in this area. This paper describes a graduate seminar entitled “Broader Impacts of Natural Sciences on Society” taught at the University of Florida in 2006 and 2008. In addition to course goals, recruitment, expectations, format, content, and outcomes, this paper describes challenges and recommendations for others who might want to teach a similar course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores agnotology and ways of not knowing in the context of gender in engineering. It presents an empirically-emergent, three-part typology of ways of not knowing about gender based on interviews with engineering professors, and contributes to the growing body of scholarship on agnotology. Just as knowledge is inseparable from issues of power, so too are areas of non-knowledge, and it is important to understand how, and to what ends, non-knowing is produced. This analysis of the social construction of ignorance around gender in engineering contributes new insights to feminist STS scholarship, as well as agnotology research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]