7.1 Being and Time

Martin Heidegger was a 20th century German philosopher who had enormous influence on shaping modern philosophical thought, and probably practical lifestyles too. He was part of the ‘existentialist’ school of philosophy, which stressed the importance of individual freedom and ‘authenticity’ (Dreyfus 1988). In other words, rather than making choices and performing actions according to some overarching theory (e.g. engineering method) or cultural practice (e.g. the current state of the art), we should do so in response to our unique experience and context—it is this that would give us freedom and make us authentic. It should be noted that experience and context are very important for engineering, whereas overarching theory (or generalization) and idealized models are the main focus of science. Heidegger’s main preoccupation was with the question of being, which is the aspect of philosophy called ontology (see Sect. 2.1).

We show in this chapter how many aspects of Heidegger’s ontology are particularly appropriate for and embodied in engineering. We also argue that Heidegger’s philosophy can help engineers to understand their role and being; this includes his thoughts on the way that time impacts our way of being as humans. Heidegger is a very difficult philosopher to read, and is accused by some of being pretentious in his deliberate creation of new words. His alleged complicity with the Nazis during the second world war doesn’t advance his cause either. Nevertheless, he appears to be highly relevant for engineers (Dias 2006). His major book is appropriately called Being and Time (Heidegger 1997).

7.2 The Primacy of Practice Over Theory

One of the main thrusts of Heidegger’s philosophy is the primacy of practice, or rather practices that we are socialized into, prior to any theoretical understanding. Heidegger approached the question of being from what he called ‘the human way of being’. He did this because humans were the only beings who were concerned about their own being. He used the term Da-sein to denote this being. In addition to meaning ‘the way humans are’, this hyphenated German word can also mean ‘being-there’ and ‘everyday human existence’. Heidegger argued that Da-sein was not a conscious subject, and that its way of being was ‘being-in-the-world’; in other words, human beings always had the notion of a ‘world’, which meant a ‘pre-theoretical’ shared agreement in practices.

Also, subject-object distinctions were blurred in our everyday lives in the world. Dreyfus (1988), one of Heidegger’s best exponents, gives the example of a person turning a doorknob to enter a room. In this very everyday act, he says, there is no conscious intention on the part of the person directed towards the doorknob, and hence no subject or object as such; rather, there is a seamless web of activity for the fulfillment of a purpose, in which both the person and doorknob are participants. Heidegger himself described this with the example of a carpenter using a hammer (Heidegger 1997, p. 65)—the terms in square brackets here and below are from a previous, more literal translation (Heidegger 1962) and the italics from the original.

The less we just stare at the thing called hammer, the more actively we use it, the more original [primordial] our relation to it becomes and the more undisguisedly it is encountered as what it is, as a useful thing [equipment]. The act of hammering itself discovers the specific ‘handiness’ of the hammer. We shall call the useful thing’s kind of being in which it reveals itself by itself handiness [ready-to-hand].

Once again this seamless web of everyday activity can be seen as not having any subject-object distinction; and the kind of knowledge required as being essentially practical—i.e. know how rather than know what. This is similar to Michael Polanyi’s (1958) idea that a scientists had to ‘interiorize’ their tools of scientific exploration (see also Sect. 5.5). The awareness of a blind man exploring a cave with a stick is not of the stick but of the cave—since the stick becomes an extension of his arm; so also scientists ‘interiorized’ their theories in order to explore the world thereby (Polanyi 1966). Polanyi is however talking about intellectual tools (i.e. theories), but Heidegger about physical ones. Meanwhile, John Dewey argued that the act of knowing was technological in nature, employing internal tools such as ideas and language; in fact, it is technological words such as ‘construction’ (e.g. of a theory or argument) that are often used to describe thought processes (Hickman 1990).

Getting back to Heidegger’s carpenter, the hammer could become conspicuous (if it was too heavy), obtrusive (if it could not be found) or even obstinate (if the head came off the hammer). This then forced the carpenter to pay attention to the hammer. There was now revealed a subject with a mental content (i.e. the carpenter) and a thing that was seen as an object (i.e. the hammer). The context however was still important, and the carpenter was still concerned about the hammer not as an isolated object, but one to be used for a purpose. Heidegger (1997, p. 68) referred to this mode of being of the hammer as unhandiness [un-ready-to-hand]. He also said that this un-readiness-to-hand pointed to two other ways of being, namely present-at-hand and just-present-at-hand (Heidegger 1997, p. 69):

When we discover its unusability, the thing becomes conspicuous. Conspicousness presents the thing at hand in a certain unhandiness [un-ready-to-hand].

With this obstinacy the objective presence [present-at-hand] of what is at hand makes itself known in a new way as the being of what is still present and calls for completion.

As a deficient mode of taking care of things, the helpless way in which we stand before it discovers the mere objective presence [just-present-at-hand] of what is at hand.

These passages reflect greater degrees of subject-object distinction and greater focus on the ‘objective’ properties of things. They indicate however that these ways of being are derived from the ‘ready-to-hand’ way of being, and are actually contained within it. These derivative ways of being show up when the primordial way of being experiences ‘breakdowns’. Heidegger insisted that the analytical isolation of fundamental properties of objects by detached subjects was a way of being that was derived from a more primordial way of being, where a seamless subject-object continuum achieved purpose through practical action. Turk (2001a) argues that objects, or at any rate their properties, are human constructs and not things that have existence independent of ourselves; he also says that the original Latin ob-iectum, meaning ‘thrown in front of us’, clearly suggests observer participation in objects.

In other words, to say that a carpenter’s hammer is “something that is useful and appropriate for carpenters to drive nails into timber” is a richer and more primordial description than saying that a carpenter’s hammer is “an object of around 20 oz (0.57 kg) weight made of a metal head firmly jointed to a wooden handle”. Note that the former description is also capable of being physically manifested in many ways—it is a ‘higher’ level functional description, rather than the ‘lower’ level physical one. Heidegger is saying that the very need for the latter analytical description has arisen because humans in the past have experienced ‘breakdowns’ in the seamless practical action of the first description—breakdowns caused either by picking up a heavier (or lighter) than usual hammer, or having the head come off the handle. Another way of saying this is that we do not get our mental picture of the world by aggregating the so called fundamental properties (e.g. material, weight, connectivity) of all its components (e.g. hammers, carpenters etc.) and their inter-relationships. Rather we get this mental picture by living in the world and being socialized into its practices through our various practical interactions. The need for fundamental properties arises only when we need to understand why our everyday experience has been disrupted, and how we can remedy the disruption to prevent it in future.

Heidegger’s philosophy could serve as an intellectual platform for combating the feelings of inferiority and lack of status that many engineers worldwide experience in a culture (still heavily influenced by Plato and ancient Greece) that values analysis more than synthesis, and theoretical knowledge more than practical intelligence (see Sect. 2.2). Patrick Nuttgens (1988) has argued that children first learn about the world by practice before they acquire a theoretical framework; and that technical education should reflect this (see also Sect. 2.4). One easy implementation of this in engineering undergraduate programs could be to have students performing a set of experiments related to a given subject before learning the theory related to it.

7.3 The Engineer’s Existential Role

Another important idea from Heidegger is that of our existential (or experiential) situation. This is defined by what could be called a ‘web of references or relations’. Heidegger said that we encountered things in the world not as isolated objects, but as equipment having a purpose. The Greek word for things is pragmata, from which we get the English word ‘pragmatic’, and conveys this very idea (Heidegger 1997). However, we never encountered equipment in isolation; rather, we encountered them in relationships to other equipment, such as pen and paper (and table and lamp and so on). It was within such an equipmental whole that the equipment had meaning. The equipment was employed towards a purpose, but this itself was subservient to Da-sein’s self-interpretation (Heidegger 1997). Dreyfus (1991, p. 92) gives an example of Heidegger’s relationships by an example where he says:

I write on the blackboard in a classroom (‘where-in’ or practical context), with a piece of chalk (‘with-which’ or item of equipment), in order to draw a chart (‘in-order-to’ conveying purpose) towards explaining Heidegger (‘towards-which’ or goal), for the sake of my being a good teacher (‘for-the-sake-of-which’ or final point). (Italics from original; parentheses by present author based on original)

Heidegger (1997) called this a structure of reference or serviceability; note that the latter is an engineering term too, that describes regular (everyday) functioning. Each person comes across this existential situation in what Heidegger called the ‘average everyday’ world. Although Heidegger’s philosophy of ‘everydayness’ can be made relevant for persons having any profession or even none, his ideas are especially apt for describing engineers. Table 7.1 presents engineering correlates for some Heideggerian terms and summarizes the discussion below.

Table 7.1 Engineering correlates of some Heideggerian terms (after Dias 2006)
Full size table

The first six rows in Table 7.1 relate to the structure of reference described by Heidegger. Heidegger’s practical context can be compared to the context for an engineering project. Such engineering projects, whether design, fabrication or maintenance, will almost invariably use equipment of one sort or other (whether computers or cranes). Purpose (towards which the ‘equipmental whole’ is deployed) is also very pertinent to engineering, which is a very pragmatic discipline oriented towards specific objectives. Needless to say, any project will have a final goal, but an engineer will also be concerned about his career, which transcends the project in some ways. More than most other professionals, an engineer is aware of his socialization. In probably no other profession do so many professionals work together in a single organization. Doctors, lawyers and architects generally practice their professions very individualistically. In addition, their contact with the public tends to be on a one-to-one basis. Engineers on the other hand make contributions that affect the entire public or large sections of it, but remain invisible to this public and have little or no contact with them. However, practising engineers are very aware of ‘being-with’ other engineers and professionals during their careers (Davis 1998).

The last nine rows in Table 7.1 relate to the way that a person would live existentially in this ‘everyday world’, the first six covered in this section and the last three in the next. Heidegger (1997) used the word ‘care’—in the sense of taking care of things—to describe Da-sein’s stance towards the world, or involvement in it. Such care was dependent on three factors. The first was ‘attunement’ (of which mood was an important aspect), and related to the past. This was also called ‘thrownness’, in the sense that Da-sein was always thrown into a particular context, both social and personal. The second was ‘understanding’, and related to the future. Understanding was considered a ‘standing-out’ into future possibilities; this was always constrained by thrownness, but a certain range of possibilities was always available to Da-sein. The third factor of care was ‘discourse’, which related to the present. This has a significance wider than a purely linguistic one. Another term that Heidegger used was ‘articulation’, which has both ontological and linguistic significance. Something that is articulated has its connections and joints disclosed—e.g. an ‘articulated’ truck. It was this articulation that enabled us to interpret and give meaning to our world.

In its everyday involvement in the world, Da-sein was described by Heidegger as ‘falling prey’ to it. Although the idea of falling has theological overtones, Heidegger meant by this value free term that Da-sein was absorbed in the ‘average everydayness’ of the ‘one’ (as in “One should respect one’s teachers” or “One does not use a hammer to break an egg”). So although average everydayness was considered to be the primordial way of being, it was essentially a ‘concealment’ (see Chap. 6 too), because it cut Da-sein off from its potentialities. Da-sein’s response to falling prey was called ‘angst’, which could be translated ‘anxiety’, although Heidegger’s translators leave the word untranslated. The theological counterpart would be ‘guilt’, but Heidegger had a slightly different concept in mind. It was angst that suggested to Da-sein the potentialities for its ‘ownmost’ way of being, in contrast to the being of the ‘one’ or that of average everydayness. In short, all of us are socialized into a world that does things in particular ways. We cannot avoid being like everyone else in most cases, but we all suspect that there are some things that can be done “in my own way”, thus giving us freedom and authenticity; in other words, we have angst until we choose with tenacity to act in ways that are “true to ourselves”.

Engineering can be seen as a problem solving discipline that is largely project based. A project will have some unique features that require context sensitive action. As such, an engineer can be seen as being thrown into a ‘situation at hand’. Within such a context, any project will have a limited but real range of (future) outcomes that can be achieved. The engineer has to interpret his situation in the light of the state of the art of his profession and the range of possibilities or alternatives available to him. He could perhaps be merely carried along the stream of the standard approach to work. The authentic engineer however will on occasion select an appropriate strategy for himself, always of course in the “sober understanding of the basic factical possibilities” (Heidegger 1997, p. 286) and in relation to other engineers and ‘actors’; but then stick to his plan, even though it may be a little away from the beaten track. This choice and resoluteness is reminiscent of a military ethos, which has been described as one of the well-springs of engineering (Davis 1998).

The above relevance of Heidegger’s notion of ‘thrownness’ to engineering practice has been cogently argued by Turk (1998, 2001a). He also discusses the ‘blindness’ that would be experienced if engineers rely on a generalized conceptual model of either the product or process they are involved in, rather than recognizing their ‘thrownness’ in a given context, with its particular idiosyncrasies (Turk 1998, 2001a). Engineers do use models, whether physical, mathematical or conceptual, especially when faced with ‘breakdowns’. They must ensure however that the models represent context as faithfully as possible, and recognize that model outputs have also to be judged in the light of specific contexts. We have come across similar ideas about engineering models in Sect. 4.5 too. In other words, engineers are committed primarily to ‘being-in-the-world’ rather than to ‘being-in-a-model-of-the-world’ (Turk 2001b).

Very often engineering boils down to decision making under uncertainty (including incomplete knowledge), in most cases under time constraints too. Engineers have to make do with the little information they have in the limited time available. This is why engineering judgement is called for, and it is Heidegger (as opposed to say Plato) who gives respectability to such a mode of decision making and form of rationality. Aristotle (2000) would have called this phronesis (practical wisdom for action) and recognized its importance; it is a great pity for engineers that he considered sophia (theoretical wisdom) to be superior. There are current philosophical trends however that espouse a higher intellectual stature for phronesis (Long 2002).

7.4 Engineering in Time

We have seen how the dimensions of care are time-related. In addition, Heidegger (1997, pp. 243–5) identified a deeper set of time-based factors that affected Da-sein, and promoted individuation, or authenticity. The future-based factor was death, which Heidegger described as being ‘ownmost’, non-relational (i.e. to be faced individually), not to be bypassed, certain and indefinite (with respect to when it will take place). An appreciation that Da-sein was in fact ‘being-towards-death’ would encourage the pursuit of one’s particular potentialities. The present-based aspect of temporality was what Heidegger (1997) called the ‘situation’. It was the current moment in which Da-sein had to choose an authentic action or direction in contrast to what ‘one’ would have done on average. It was for this authentic choosing that resoluteness was required.

The past-based factor was the cultural history into which Da-sein had been socialized, starting from birth. The influence of temporality was thus extended from Da-sein’s birth to death. At first sight, this cultural history would suggest an averaging tendency as opposed to an individuating one, since social norms are based on such cultural history. Heidegger referred however to the historicity of being, in that differing ways of being human showed up in different times and cultures. For example, heroic behavior was revealed in ancient Greece, and saintliness in Christian culture (Dreyfus 1991). So being had to be interpreted in the light of a time horizon. However, present day Da-sein could obtain role-models for emulation from historical periods other than its own. In the same sense, Heidegger (1977) also said that history was a critique of the present.

The aspect of temporality has particular relevance to engineers. Apart from the state of the art, they will have the history of the profession to guide their choices. This highlights the importance of case histories for engineers, both in their initial and continuing education (Dias and Blockley 1995; Dias 2014). Examples from the past can bring fresh insight into a state of the art that has fallen into a ‘rut’. Another source of the quest for originality that drives many ‘builders’, whether rulers, owners or building sector professionals, may be an appreciation of their mortality, and a desire to leave behind unique ‘monuments’.

Time, on a day to day basis, is also very relevant to an engineering project. Although a project schedule is based on calendar days, it is the inter-relationships between activities, their pre-requisites and durations that are important. Each project would therefore have a string of activities that constitute its ‘critical path’; it is this time-line that is of consequence, rather than the sequence of passing days. As we see in the last row of Table 7.1, every moment in a project is a ‘now-that’, an immediate context that has to be evaluated for possible corrective or opportunistic action. Working ‘overtime’ is therefore very common in engineering projects. It is not the pre-specified length of a working day that matters, but whether the work scheduled for the day has been completed.

Because of the importance of time in engineering projects, it is a resource that is occasionally traded off with others, such as accuracy, and even quality. A design engineer who is pressed for time may not be able to use refined analytical techniques; he will however ‘play safe’ and his design will probably involve a higher margin of safety (with some increase in cost too). A construction engineer who is fighting a deadline may be tempted to take ‘short-cuts’ on some aspects of construction quality, especially if the deviation has only a small impact on the final product (Dias 1997). At any rate, the time dimension, together with its perceived importance in engineering projects, increases the amount of engineering judgement required.

7.5 From Average Everydayness to Existential Pleasure in Engineering

Given that the engineering state of the art can often result in a standard approach to work, engineers may at times experience a certain lack of fulfillment or even boredom in their work. What is worse, it may be perceived that their work can be performed by those without engineering qualifications or credentials. In some societies, less qualified persons, such as drivers of train engines, do indeed bear the title ‘engineer’. Employers who wish to cut costs could substitute engineers with technicians, but still bestow the job title of ‘engineer’ on them. This would be inconceivable in the medical and legal professions. In some cases, a technician (with less formal education) may even perform better at routine tasks. This can lead to a feeling of inferiority for engineers. It can also lead to questioning the value of a formal, rigorous engineering education. The gap between engineering education (largely theoretical and mathematical) and practice (largely practical and empirical) is widely acknowledged (Dias and Blockley 1995), and in probably no other profession is that gap so manifest; but the way to bridge it is by no means clear.

Heidegger’s moves away from ‘average everydayness’ can provide a way towards the resolution of the above dilemma. There are two ways in which such a move can take place. The first is precipitated by ‘breakdown’. The carpenter in Heidegger’s example is involved in very practice-based unconscious hammering only when nothing is wrong. However, when there is a breakdown in this everydayness, say when the hammer is too heavy, the carpenter will have to resort to ‘mentality’ and study properties such as the weight of the hammer object; or if the head comes off the handle, once again he will have to give careful attention to the properties of the joint, in order to solve the problem. In fact, Heidegger considered that scientific observation and reflection took place precisely at such breakdowns.

This then would be the engineers’ justification for their theoretical training. Although they may be using a standard approach to engineering practice in the normal course of events, they will need a bedrock of theoretical knowledge to fall back on when faced with problems that intrude into their work. Many professional engineering organizations, in the process of admitting engineers to full membership after a period of work-based training, are interested in finding out about problems encountered during the engineer’s work, and how ‘engineering first principles’ were used to overcome them. It should be noted that this scientific analysis need not be confined to physical entities; they can also be directed at the social context in which engineering takes place, e.g. via the sociological analysis of failures (Turner and Pidgeon 1997).

Furthermore, especially in civil engineering practice, every project has some degree of unpredictability that causes deviation from its design or planning, particularly when the project is carried out in a complex natural and social environment. These problems can range from a bored pile excavation that may encounter a hard stratum before reaching the desired rock layer (causing excessive durations of boring), to a ready mixed concrete truck that may get delayed by traffic (casting doubts about the workability of the concrete). In spite of measures such as quality assurance—where it is sought to guarantee quality by carefully controlled work practices—engineers on site will often be forced to make judgements on the best course of action under non-ideal conditions (or breakdowns). For this, they will need recourse to deeper knowledge (Dias 1997).

Heidegger’s other move from everydayness was in his description of choosing one’s ‘ownmost potentiality’ rather than ‘falling prey’ to the way that things would normally be done. So, an engineer could display his ability to do more than the ‘run of the mill’, by asking whether even a routine activity could be done better—within practical limits of course, the importance of which was underlined by Heidegger too. Heidegger then gives us the rationale for self-actualization even in the midst of the routine. Florman (1994), in his book on The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, points to the self-actualization that comes from the work of engineers that certainly  transcends average everydayness.

Another concept used to describe this is Schon’s (1983) ‘reflective practice’, which has been applied to engineering as well (Blockley 1992; Dias and Blockley 1995). The modern novelist Robert Harris’ (2004) well researched book Pompeii explores the experiences of a hydraulics engineer in Roman times; an engineering reflection on the novel (Dias 2010) highlights some of the above aspects of an engineering outlook to practice. Broome and Peirce (1997) use the term ‘heroic’ to describe what engineers should aim for, and be educated for, in order to “venture forth from the world of common day”, both to make decisions under incomplete information and also to make their profession a ‘caring’ one—see also Sect. 6.5.

Heidegger was also concerned however, about the way that the true nature of things was concealed by our ‘average everydayness’, and his approach to philosophy was one of deep questioning. Among the many aspects of ‘being’ questioned by Heidegger (1977) were those of science and modern technology, which he thought reduced everything (including man) to the level of a mere ‘resource’. On the other hand, he did affirm traditional technology, which he considered similar to poetry, which in turn he commended as an antidote to modern technology (Heidegger 1971). These aspects have been dealt with in detail in Chap. 6, which advocates for this spirit of questioning among engineers (who are the agents of technology); and also suggests that the use of metaphor could liberate design from its often narrow rationalism (Snodgrass and Coyne 1992).

In closing we can say that although Heidegger’s stated preoccupation was with being, it appears that much of his writing in fact focuses on doing. In this respect too therefore, he has much relevance for engineering. Both Heidegger (1997) and Polanyi (1958) can be seen as advocating an ‘instrumentalist’ epistemology—i.e. the notion that we arrive at knowledge about the world through action as well, rather than by ‘pure thought’ alone. We return to both these philosophers again at the beginning of Chap. 8.

7.6 Summary

  • In a cultural milieu where scientific understanding is prized over empirical action, resulting in engineers having self-doubt about their worth and status, Heidegger could serve as a patron philosopher for engineers, emphasizing as he does the primacy of practice over theory and also that of given contexts over idealized models.

  • Heidegger addresses the gap between engineering education (generally highly theoretical, requiring analysis) and engineering practice (often very empirical, requiring judgement), by defining the relationship between know how (used during ‘average everydayness’) and know what (used during ‘breakdowns’).

  • Heidegger clarifies the importance of the temporal element for engineers—e.g. learning from past case histories in addition to being guided by the state of the art; seeing our mortality as a spur to creativity; and seeing the present moment as always presenting opportunities for corrective or opportunistic interventions.

  • Heidegger suggests two possibilities for moving away from ‘average everydayness’ in order to achieve our own authenticity and freedom. They are the use of theoretical knowledge during ‘breakdowns’ and the use of reflective practice in the continual succession of ‘current moments’.