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What Do Bridges and Software Tell Us about the Philosophy of Engineering?

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Philosophy of Engineering, East and West

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 330))

Abstract

One of the challenges in the emergent field of philosophy of engineering is to understand its position relative to philosophy of science. The call for a rigorous experimental methodology that has affected several fields in engineering should not make us equate good experimentation with traditional scientific experimentation. We have reason to believe that the primary role of artifacts and the human factor introduced by their designers affect the nature of experiments in engineering research and differentiate them from the traditional scientific method. We carry out our analysis with a specific focus on software engineering, a field in which the level of attention for scientific rigor in experiments has become very high in recent years.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria of Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Viola SCHIAFFONATI

  2. School of Media, Culture and Society, University of the West of Scotland, Ayr, UK

    Mario VERDICCHIO

Authors
  1. Viola SCHIAFFONATI
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  2. Mario VERDICCHIO
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Viola SCHIAFFONATI .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Carl Mitcham

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Bocong LI

  3. Engineering & Computer Science, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, USA

    Byron Newberry

  4. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Beijing, China

    Baichun ZHANG

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SCHIAFFONATI, V., VERDICCHIO, M. (2018). What Do Bridges and Software Tell Us about the Philosophy of Engineering?. In: Mitcham, C., LI, B., Newberry, B., ZHANG, B. (eds) Philosophy of Engineering, East and West. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 330. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62450-1_12

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