Presenting... the Phishikawa diagram!

Why I'm writing this

Extracting something interesting to say out of what feels like a good - but perhaps vague - initial notion can be tricky and frustrating, especially for someone like this engineer trying to be philosophical about the engineering life. That's what happened when I was working on a now postponed post: I found myself getting stuck in the descriptions, on the surface, without finding a way to get satisfyingly deep into what I was trying to say: more drifting than drafting.

Then I remembered another (unfinished) draft from an (unfinished) series on engineering tools and I thought it time to put that tool - the Ishikawa diagram - to use.

The Ishikawa diagram

Also known as the fishbone diagram because of the way several themes jut out from a central theme's spine, this isn't as uniquely an engineering tool as the FMEA, but it is much used in industrial settings, mostly in the context of quality investigations. Looking back, I found a wry post of mine about it from back in 2012, where, whilst being more fixated on the overly literal depiction of the fishbone diagram, I listed out the typical topics for a quality investigation (the several 'M' words like "Machine", "Manpower", "Metrology", etc, as titles).

Fundamentally, it's about seeding ideas to be condensed around common themes to ensure that nothing obvious is overlooked when searching for a root cause. It's important to note here that it can also be an efficient tool, in that clearly irrelevant or non-contributing aspects can quickly be disregarded, allowing focus on the trickier stuff.

The Phishikawa diagram...

... or "Phishbone" diagram, is the philosophical version of the original. Its bones consist of key philosophical themes to aid in the search for the roots of the topics we want to consider. In this case, it won't initially be very efficient, as I'll need to spend time with each topic, these being:

  • Ontology (attempting to describe how a topic is)
  • Epistemology (understanding what we can know about the topic)
  • Acting and working (understanding what modes of action and knowledge are involved - based on Aristotle's concepts of poiesis (making) & praxis (politics))
  • Hermeneutics (how we interpret texts and artefacts resulting from this topic)
  • Phenomenology (how we experience this topic personally)

This is what it looks like, in its first iteration:

ThePhisikawaPhishboneDiagram_202308

(I used the fishbone diagram template in Xmind to create this version) I have also created a separate page for the Phishikawa diagram on this site, here

My hope is that using this as a form of mental scaffolding, I can construct a more detailed analysis of whichever topic I want to consider. But don't worry, I'll try to keep the text chatty and legible nevertheless!


The engineer at play - part II: A Playground

Continuing my observations on being a working, playful engineer: you can read the introduction in Part 1

Time flies when you're in the lab

I recently read, in a borderline mystical article about the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC over on Wired , the phrase "time flies when you're in the fabs" (production plants where microchips are fabricated). Substitute the 'f' in "fabs" with an 'l' and you have the same for me in the lab... sort of.

In that article, the time-flying stems from the sort of sensory overload we experience when visiting a new city or a factory for the first time: the quantity and intensity of new inputs and interactions can overwhelm our mental processing capabilities and it's tricky to know where to focus our attention.

For this effect to take hold in a calm, familiar lab we need other stimuli, something unusual to happen, to kick us out of the routine and into a mode that could (until a technician reminds us) lead to us forgetting that it might be lunchtime. We need play.

The lab for the development engineer

It perhaps doesn't sound right to associate a lab with play, this agile alertness that brings joy and satisfaction to an activity, and there are certainly some instances where, as you might expect, the conditions necessary for play simply aren't there: we're repeating a totally standard test on standard parts for re-qualification. In other instances, excitement occurs, but not necessarily play (quality investigations spring to mind, alas).

For me it was as development engineer that my playful relationship with the lab really became most apparent. Setting out to produce something new from an initial idea gets the creative juices flowing, the mind whirring. Extending this into the lab is brilliant: not yet knowing if parts can be tested with current equipment, not knowing what the results will be (even if we have hopes or technical expectations for what they should be), uncertainty as to how representative of a potential final product the initial prototypes will be all gets us thinking, imagining, tinkering, bouncing ideas off others in the team. At this exciting stage we're a long way from expecting pass/fail reports or sometimes even answers: we're finding out what the questions should be, we're in the phase where interesting results are to be found in the realms of "promising," "so-close...," or "so far off...": results that lead to further ideas and testing.

Playtime!

These are my most "alive", most playful moments in the lab, with multiple phases and objects (in the grammatical sense of people and things) of attention: chatting with technicians, handling parts, checking drawings and the test rig, figuring out how samples might be mounted, whether we need new fixtures (if we do, and we need to order something, playtime quickly ends!). The lab technicians may have encountered similar ideas in the past and warn what their weaknesses were. This is where the 'plan' (the official test request that I wrote back at my desk, in the past), meets a reality which is starting to become "now", and need knocking into shape to bring closer to practical reality.

Starting the test entails switching attention from the personal and the physical to the informational: whilst still operating keys and switches and clicking a mouse button, still discussing with the technicians, we're opening the appropriate programs, ensuing all the settings and parameters are right for this test (they may be totally custom, or tweaks of some existing presets), priming the data logger to start upon a certain trigger signal, and then pressing some kind of 'start' button to run the test.

Finally the test begins: I'll have my hopes, fears and expectations, and (if I'm in the lab whilst testing is under way) I'll be weighing up the results against those expectations as they come in. I tend to be unable to avoid interpreting every single result as it comes in, pondering already - too soon, but in preparation - their meaning, and of potential repercussions or next steps in the product's development, whilst actively reminding myself (part of an engineer's training and experience) to avoid reading too much into the insufficient data that we currently have... If I'm helping with the test (usually a bad idea, but sometimes necessary), I'll be petrified of missing a step, but too distracted by the results to be able to calmly concentrate on my tasks, so sometimes I'll make mistakes. Equally, though, if I see a totally unexpected result come up, I'm on hand to discuss it straight away with the lab technician, ready to test hypotheses and to come up with a plan on the fly.

For very slow tests (the archetype for me here being corrosion testing), those doubts and expectations surface from time to time at unexpected moments, the spirit of the test spooking me from where I sit, calling me back to the dungeon - I mean lab - to check up on the parts, peeking into the chamber to reassure, or to terrify myself, before the official end of the test, all the while being aware of the suspicion of influencing the test by the mere peeking inside...

This is all part of the game, aspects of play.

Not play

Typically, for me, the sense of play is over long before the full test is finished: testing itself quickly becomes routine and requires that different mindset and expectations of a technician. As hinted at above, a key difference between someone like me and an experienced technician is that they typically don't let themselves get distracted by results, and can - we could say stoically, though it often seems more simply to be their nature that drew them to this job, rather than any additional philosophical system modifying their behaviour - just plough through the testing, seemingly effortlessly concentrating on testing each sample correctly.

This raises some interesting questions about games and play: surely there are games that require quiet concentration, the ability to avoid distraction and still be able to react to variance? Yes, of course! My counter to this point is that, if the prior play has been successful, and the test runs well, then you could put any practised technician in to run the test itself, without any knowledge of the parts or the origin of the test: it's routine that wins, not reactivity or any particular alertness.

Indeed, under certain circumstances, I would run the test myself. There are aspects of this that I appreciate: handling the parts, knowing their type and expected performance, I observe and register many things, almost like a craftsman; the same with the test rig and mounting the samples for each test. Yet this doesn't feel playful to me: it's careful and precise, but doesn't require the alertness or the ability to bring in factors from all sorts of sources for it to work. It just does work, and can (should) be a bit of a plod.

Usually, the end of the test also doesn't feel like play: it's mostly loosening things and removing samples from the rig. Typically, we'll look at a few of them to see if anything unusual happened to them, visually; if it's an unusual batch, then I'll keep them all for possible analysis afterwards. It's the analysis, interpretation and presentation of the results where the playful can re-emerge.

The philosophical playoratory

It's in such an appropriately equipped, ideally local and freely accessible lab (rather than an external test centre), where you know the colleagues and can take the time to discuss things with them, that a lot of what makes engineering so appealing come to life: bouncing ideas off each other, deciding what tests to run on which parts, what equipment to use, who would be the best person to do the testing. Phrases like "oh, let's try it in there" or "could we perhaps...?" or "let's test a couple of parts, see where we stand", or "how do we get this to fit?" and "do you think we'll be able to see if...?" represent play in the lab.

Analysis of the data or of parts after testing can also be playful, the classic example here being the microscope: "check there," "zoom in to that", "measure that bit there" - but of course with the same phrases being applicable to charts and data - always trying to figure out meanings and implications.

When I consider my interactions with the lab, things get philosophically complicated and interesting, with multiple relationships and perspectives manifesting at different phases during a test, and, sometimes, all at once. Here's a list of the semi-philosophical aspects that flicker in and out of attention in the lab context:

  • My relationships with colleagues
    • Philosophically related to politics, practice and ethical action
  • My relationship with the parts
    • Those parts and their multiple meanings and implications are present physically and (differently) in my mind. In both contexts are they real entities on which I imbue real concerns and hopes. I sense them and I imagine them.
    • Philosophically related to the perspectives of...
      • practice and technique
      • phenomenology (understanding how we experience and interact with others, along with borderline metaphysical considerations of "reality")
      • ontology (understanding what is, and how it is)
      • epistemology (knowing what we know about the part, and what we still don't, and want to know)
  • My relationship with the test equipment
    • direct (if I do the testing myself)
    • indirect (if the technician does the testing for me)
    • knowing its strengths and weaknesses, relationship with "real world" use
    • Philosophically related to...
      • phenomenology
      • ontology
  • My relationship with the test process / procedure
    • determining steps in advance: planning
    • being alert and open to possible changes as they come in
    • action
  • My relationship with pretty much the whole of history (or at least the history of science and technology)
    • how we ended up with these machines, parts, means, methods and levels of understanding
  • My relationship with the "background technologies"
    • Paper, screens, mobile phones, furniture, buildings, infrastructure
    • Fans, coolers, data networks of the equipment being used
    • Test rig consumables
  • My relationship with the data
    • Philosophically...
      • hermeneutics
      • epistemology (how do I interpret the data, what knowledge and experience do I already have that permits me to understand what the data is telling me in this particular, hopefully productive, way)
      • phenomenology (how am I viewing the data, how are they mediated)
  • The overarching experience of testing
    • phenomenology

Full suite philosophy

As we can see above, the lab - and engineering - is full of the key perspectives of philosophy (that I'm aware of, anyway, discounting metaphysics):

  • Hermeneutics - interpreting requirements, procedures and results
  • Phenomenology - "feeling" and experiencing the parts, through your eyes and modulated through instruments
  • Epistemology - assessing the current knowledge about a thing, trying to figure out what's not yet known, and how to know it, how confident we can be in that knowledge, and how to deliver that knowledge to others
  • Politics and interaction (and a kind of technological ethics) - dealing with lab technicians, lab managers, getting timing commitments or confirming resources, dealing with problems
  • Maybe some ontology, as an overarching concept? What exactly are these things and tools we are dealing with? How do they exist, what becomes of them during and after testing? What are our affordances, what can we use, manipulate to our advantage, ensuring power and data connections, temperature conditions, etc

These perspectives all intermingle, and attention flickers between them. I, as a non-philosopher engineer, have a lot to learn from them, which is why I'm here, writing this!

Play anywhere!

This extended reflection on my experiences in the lab is only one example of how work-time play can arise. The phrase "productive meetings" doesn't need to be an oxymoron: ideas really can arise out of playful action, even in a meeting environment.

Don't discount non-work play at work

Another form of play - equally important, in my opinion - is recreation. Ultimately, this is about restoring body and (in our case, in the work environment, more significantly) brain to be ready for the next pulse of work. Our brains really do get tired, gum up with waste chemicals that need removal or simply need more fuel, after all. But we, as humans, also need to tend to our groups, teams and societies - so that lunchbreak the technician reminded us of earlier is important in this way, too.

Documentational drag

In engineering, as at home, playtime is often over swiftly. Data gathered from the tests needs to be summarised and reported; completed, those reports have to be saved in the appropriate library for future reference - tagged and searchable so that future colleagues have a chance of finding what their predecessors got up to in the dim and distant development of those tests, products and processes. And, of course, the physical needs to be tidied up, too - a fundamental part of play, but not, as far as I experience it, play!

From play to mastery

Another aspect to consider is that the goal of work is mastery: knowing what to minimally adjust to achieve the maximum desired effect. Mastery is a calmer version of play, secure in the knowledge that what you're doing is right (and good), but retaining that awareness and reactivity to adjust to any small deviations.

Just as there are various perspectives to focus on whilst mastering a musical instrument (sound, agility, improvisation, etc) - or even, come to think of, a measuring instrument, there are ways of mastering engineering topics and systems that aren't purely technical, but require that playful agility, that personal phronesis, way of acting, that has become such a key part of my thinking on engineering.

Once mastery has been achieved, though, the goal of a company is often to move back beyond mastery to renewed play - to build on the already-mastered to expand its competencies and to stay ahead of the market game. This is an institutional challenge that goes beyond the individual, but it relies on individuals to recognise that necessity and not to succumb to the deadening constraints of overspecification and the mere passing of audits.

Getting back into the game

I'd like to end on a personal note: as I mentioned in my penultimate post, I've been between jobs for a while. I can now report that as of May 2023 I'll be getting back into the ring, in a new arena, with completely different products to those that I used to be involved in making. Fortunately my new employer recognised the skills and experience that I will bring with me to their game, and I'm looking forward to making use of them once more. But most of all, I'm looking forward to playful engagement, moving things forward with a new team, in perhaps unexpected, but fruitful ways.


The engineer at play - part I

By "play" I mean, of course, "work", but in a certain mode, which, because it's work, isn't always fun but can be, more significantly, very satisfying.

What is play, and can it work?

Thinking back to an episode with my daughter from a while ago, I recall fondly how she wasn't in a good mood - well, OK, that's not the fondly remembered part; what is, is that we changed that through play. I joined her as she sat listlessly on her bed, surrounded by toys: a few cars, horses and an array of some of her smaller cuddly toys. We both just sat there, amongst the toys, for a little bit - at least she didn't send me away. Then, on a whim, I grabbed a car and started driving it over the mountainous terrain of her duvet. The car drove up a ridge too fast and flew into the air, now swooping and banking in all of the suddenly available three dimensions. My daughter responded by reaching for a toy horse, which leaped into the air to chase the thieves escaping the scene of their crime in my car. The glint returned to her eyes.

From there the story took many magical twists and suspenseful turns, including more chases, clever distractions and arguments, as well as frequent restorative and reconciliatory cups of tea amongst the protagonists, until, at last, the horse rustlers were apprehended and promised not to do that again...

Thinking back to an episode with a supplier, I recall fondly how one of their process had proven to be less stable than expected - well, OK, that's not the fondly remembered part; what is, is that we changed that through... well, in an engineering sense, it was through play. We sat in the meeting room, surrounded by parts, flipcharts, whiteboards, the projector and tools. Then, on a whim, I asked about one particular aspect of the production line; the supplier responded with details on that, which then raised more questions, leading to a dash to the production line itself to see for ourselves, then to modify and tune parameters, replace tools, take parts into the lab for testing, eager for results and direction.

From there the story took many developmental twists and political turns, including more trials, confusion, argument, and restorative cups of coffee amongst the protagonists until, at the end, the process was stabilised and the supplier promised not to do that again...

What just happened?

What unites these two episodes despite their very different contexts is play: both involved getting involved and getting caught up in a situation, openly and staying alert to sensing, reacting to and guiding what happens. Play is by no means a passive or "useless" activity if it's guided towards the matter at hand: the brain is whirring away looking for signs, adapting, trying, sometimes failing (I got told off by my daughter for attempting to use a teddy as an all-powerful giant to smash open a cave), but quickly adapting again to find something that works to maintain momentum.

Play that lab report

'Play' has a childish ring to it, connotations of a lack of seriousness, of 'wasting time' on Wordle rather than writing that urgent report, and it remains true that the playful mode isn't suited to all engineering tasks (filling out Bills of Materials springs to mind). But, with play, we can allow ourselves and our teams to widen the mental net, to get things wrong to then get them more right, to find more efficient workflows and to make work simply more fulfilling, whatever the task.

Indeed, if you think about it, what is report writing but an exercise in language, and what is language but one of our most fundamental modes of play? In writing, you're looking for words, trying out phrases, sorting and re-sorting the order, searching for alternatives, yearning to get past that frustrating and tantalising "tip of the tongue" barrier, whilst still progressing the word count or in editing afterwards.

One level beyond that of language being a form of play is to treat philosophy as play, too, as Joseph Dunne points out in the introduction to Back to the Rough Ground:

philosophy can seriously address practical issues and be a form of play.

Later on, he expands on this thought:

Philosophy is itself a practice, and, as in the case of any other practice, it is only when one gets caught up in doing it that one can learn to get out of it what it can give

Being aware of what Dunne means by "a practice" is important: it's that non-technical, non-prescribed art of action and interaction: it's not-checklists (but it can be involved in creating checklists in the first place!) Play, in all contexts, is about agility, being fleet of mind, and being prepared to expand horizons of opportunity.

In my next post, I'll give an example of a particularly rich source of 'play' from my experience, namely the lab.

Until then, keep playing!


Literally not engineering

I am, for reasons beyond my control, at present - yet hopefully “only” - between jobs: being out of my last job is a fact, and finding a next one isn’t (I’m working on it, and have a couple of potential leads), so uncertainty abounds.

I posted about how I feel about this situation on my personal blog over at Diversions Manifold. The philosophical aspect that I want to reflect on here is, now that I’m not working at an engineering company, whether I am also (again hopefully, only temporarily) out of engineering, and, because of that (temporarily) not an engineer.

Staying engineer

Without right now wanting to go down the rabbit-hole of trying to define what, exactly, an engineer is, we can at least posit that the two (engineering and being an engineer) are different states (being and doing): so I am and remain an engineer, but I’m not practicing it.

Briefly to the personal, I’ve been out of my job for nearly two months now, and it’s been tougher than I had expected. All that searching for appropriate new jobs, updating CVs and cover letters, preparing for interviews, accepting rejections, and the frequent switching between hope and - well, not despair, exactly - but certainly concern for the future, have taken a higher than expected toll on me.

But all that work on the CV, tuning each cover letter for each application and now having had a couple of positive-feeling interviews, has made me aware of the wealth of experience I can count on. This experience isn’t just “past”: it now constitutes part of me and my neural networks, enabling me to act in my own unique yet “engineeringy” way. Each item on the CV recalls the nous and the feel I have for the combination of techne and praxis, for the technical and the playful in my profession. Significantly, they all still feel “live”, accessible and deployable for whomever and wherever I end up working with and for. Each item hides, or signifies, a story. Not just “work experience”, but real struggles, achievements, lessons learned or buried for possible future connection to another event: bruises and scratches (usually suffered by mouse and text) that have formed me. Those learned paths haven’t, I feel, become impassable and atrophied in those two months out of practice.

Those same experiences are also devilishly difficult to describe to someone in an hour’s online first interview…

Hearteningly, I find myself looking forward to making use of those skills again, and haven’t entertained thoughts of trying out something else entirely.

So, to me, I’m still an engineer, and potential employers seem to concur. The other question was: am I out of engineering?

Not quite engineering

The one tech-adjacent hobby that I’ve been working on during my gardening leave that could be considered to be “engineering” is resin 3D printing of mouthpieces for brass instruments. Actually playing those instruments (in my case, the trombone), is clearly a different category of activity altogether - and combining the two is a fascinating pursuit.

At present, I’d say my 3D printing is at more of a craft stage than anything engineered. This is not to denigrate crafts at all: they most certainly require ingenuity and a feel for both the materials and what is to be achieved through them; they rely on internal impressions and learned pathways for the craftsman to interpret and “feel”, then to act - or react - at each stage of the process. In all honesty, that also describes rather a lot of engineering: the spectrum of crafts does overlap with that of the technical as well as of the purely artistic. In my case, I’m only now beginning to settle on a half-way reliable print setup that allows me to make design changes and print them without the permanent fear that they’ll fail; concentrating finally on the part itself without worrying about the printing process that goes into producing it.

So, although my equipment and materials have all been engineered to a high degree, my own use of them is not at an engineered level. My craft has not yet been elevated to engineering (I say this whilst bearing in mind that many crafts would be smothered by engineering).

My engineering self does have an idea as to what’s required to make the whole setup more engineered: having a good, reliable technical setup, selecting the best materials for the job, developing reliable tests and parameters to measure and compare each iteration, and gaining confidence in the information available to me.

Just that first point is complex enough, involving optimising factors like print orientation, support structures, UV exposure times, resin bed tilt rates and (quite key) temperature control. My current settings - and challenges - have all stemmed from not-quite-understanding what affects the quality or success of a print.

In philosophical terms, then: epistemologically I’ve been floundering to find the knowledge that will lead to success, still unable to transition between types of knowledge, from having a “gut feel” to a theory and procedure that will - all other things being equal - guarantee a successful print and product.

This is a very common engineering dilemma. We have nous - an idea that something works - which we can even specify in terms of parameters that should lead to a quality product, but we don’t usually delve back down “to the atoms” to understand precisely what’s going on in either theory or practice… until it goes wrong, our assumptions are challenged, and we have to learn new details.

Ontologically, it’s fascinating to recognise that I have converted concepts and ideas into 3D CAD files into sliced printer files into print jobs into actual parts (and surprising amounts of waste), then, on the basis of trials, updated the CAD files to continue the cycle until - still a goal - I have a satisfactory product… for me. After that, I’d have to be able to translate those parameters for other players, and players of other instruments.

Phenomenologically, I have interacted with computer and machine user interfaces, (hermeneutically) interpreted 2D renderings of non-real 3D objects into mental “understandings”, and then, finally, felt, tried and (unfortunately, in many cases) smelt the final product as they emerged from the whole production process, leading to a search for less pungent, officially biocompatible materials to work with, as well as for the “perfect” design.

Sounding it out

Leading on from the phenomenological experience of the part, the “true”, or “real” end of each 3D print is a satisfactory quality of the mouthpiece that’s been produced. Here, at the time of writing, I’m leaning heavily on my “ear” and on the personal feeling of playing a new, plastic mouthpiece, all the while comparing it (is it “better”, or “worse”) to my standard brass mouthpiece, to previous prototypes? That’s not an “engineer’s” way of understanding quality, and it’s far from being scientific. So I’ll also be searching for ways to standardise tests (involving microphones and sound analysis software, for example) which will still, no doubt, depend on me playing the instrument with the new mouthpiece in it. Can I define a standard embouchure and air pressure to play even a standardised sequence of notes in exactly the same way for each variant, like a golfer honing their swing?

Probably not, but I’ll try.

That’s the engineer in me knowing what’s required - but not yet engineering.

Admin it!

One aspect of engineering that I’m very far from with this hobby is the whole admin, bureaucracy and documentation aspect of engineering. Ultimately, engineered products are to be used by customers, so must meet norms and regulations, be economically viable, environmentally acceptable. So, even if I did end up with a technologically proven mouthpiece design, I have the feeling that, without a company behind it, it’s still a craft. Is engineering ultimately also an economic activity? It’s something to consider!

Working it out

Practically speaking, and to summarise: I’m out of engineering, but I still know what it looks and feels like, and feel able to rejoin the ranks of the engineers. Just wish me luck on that front: I don’t want to have to be too philosophical about being out of work…


Change and being philosophical about it

It's weirdly comforting, almost homely, being back here at Literally Engineering, on Typepad, after all those years away (my last active post here was in 2015: the ones you see below were imported from my other blog, engiphy). I'd as good as forgotten about Literally Engineering until I found an ancient link to it whilst cleaning up old bookmarks in my browser. Curious, I clicked, and found, to my surprise, that (aided by the magic of a password app) it all still worked!

The comfort and homeliness stems from the look and feel of the place, where, in this day and age of perpetual updates, beautification and simplification, nothing seems to have changed since I last visited. The Typepad dashboard and management pages still look like a 1990s blog throwback: and I like it! So I paid the subscription again to be able to select and modify some vaguely appealing themes beyond the absolute basic standard, and started drafting this post.

From our archives...

Whilst I was typing, my curiosity extended to what Literally Engineering in its various guises was about. Remembering to save the draft, I checked back to my very first post here, from 2012, called, simply, "On Engineering". In it, I had stated that I wanted to write about

...what engineers actually do. I mean on a day to day basis. Yes, we solve all the world's problems, we turn ideas into reality, we make things and their processes more efficient, cheaper - we optimise - but what do we actually do? All day?

Was that... philosophy?

I created my now interim engineering blog, engiphy, with the intention of focussing on my own developing ideas within the domain of the philosophy of engineering. Engiphy was fine - but, if I'm honest, I found that limiting myself to the philosophy of engineering ran the danger of the blog ending up being a bit stuffy (though I always try not to let my writing become that). I also found myself reading more than posting, then kind of forgetting what I'd read, re-reading, trying to take notes from the stuff that I'd highlighted, and getting lost in all of that uncertainty and vagueness, rather than actively writing again (a key component to understanding, which should then be enriched by discourse). I also caught myself getting distracted by the general "busyness" of Wordpress with its frequent updates and plugin management and "SEO optimisation": the slightly clunky simplicity of Typepad is another key benefit of this return.

So, on a whim, I exported engiphy from WordPress and imported it all - remarkably simply! - here. And now, on the tip of 2023, I'm reanimating Literally Engineering (/On Engineering) to discuss my engineering life, and the philosophy around it.

To answer the header question: no, it wasn't philosophy in the active sense. I was asking what engineers do, more as a list of activities, without enquiring into what we are. More pertinently, I had at that point never really thought about the philosophies of knowledge, of existence and being, of perception and interpretation: never actively considered the multiple layers and perspectives of what it is to be a human and, more specifically, what it means to be a member of that peculiar subset of humanity, an engineer.

So I feel it's time to recombine my old interest in describing this engineering life with my newer interest in philosophy, and to start typing away here.

Being philosophical

Funnily enough, between starting this post and finishing it, the company that employed me... required me to put that employment into the past tense. It's been a bit of a roller coaster ride, I will admit, a combination of feeling that a baseline of trust had been whipped out from under my feet, concern about the future, and intrigue and looking forward to finding out where I will end up working. There's a phrase that many make use of under such circumstances: being philosophical about it.

Now that I'm more aware of the sheer breadth of the philosophical toolkit, this phrase that could come across as being simply heedless chatter, an idiom with very little depth, now takes on a rich mantle of meaning: I want to be philosophical about it - about it all!

As for my future job, the main thing for me is that I stay in engineering (i.e., whilst I can do it, I'm not the world's most enthusiastic program manager; and I'm certainly not a sales person!), the better to stay on this niche but fascinating path along considering engineering from a philosophical perspective. It should be an interesting journey!


Engineers (not) at war

My good friend Flavio - blogger, occasional Twitterer (@dionisoo) [edit: Flavio is no longer on Twitter following Musk's apparently gleeful trashing of his platform's moderation team and efforts], fellow trombonist and overall interesting and interested chap - recently delved into the ethics of the West’s - and historically Russophile Italy’s in particular - response to Putin’s moves to, umm, apparently save Ukraine from itself and to enfold it “back” into the loving arms of Mother Russia - or invasion, the simpler and more honest term for it.

One point, as expressed by ethicist Vito Mancuso, that Flavio picked up on was that peace, whilst massively preferable to war, contains within itself the potential for war: peace requires deterrence, that ability - and appearance of ability - of a state to defend itself at what will clearly be a great cost to the aggressor. As such, peace can be considered to be less a mere absence of war, but rather a state in which that potential to battle has to be actively maintained, like nature’s poisons and armour that are justifiably costly to the being that develops them.

This maintenance is also directed inwards, against the threat of elements that society (or, in the case of autocrats and dictators, that they) cannot tolerate. Here, the potential for “violence” is held by the state in the form of police and the judiciary - as envisaged by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan. In its positive cases, such a threat of peace enables society and industry to grow and develop, rather than being permanently nibbled and gnawed away by gangs and greed (the difference between Mexican and US American border towns can be glaring).

In each of these cases, the potential includes the technologies of war, and, as technology’s custodians, the role engineers play in maintaining that potential.

Where there is technology, there are engineers

As the Russian hostilities started, and the Ukrainian defence kicked into acton, and as reports came in of Russian tanks and other armoured equipment suffering significant losses during that initial phase, it occurred to me that there will be weapons engineers on both sides studying failures for as much information as they can get to learn from and further develop their products.

Russian tank designers will be thinking along the lines of: “how do we improve the survivability of our tanks against Javelin and NLAW battlefield weapons? How do we do that without making them ever more heavy, slow, unmanoevreable, inefficient? Are there damage types that we could have prevented with a different design? Are there new materials and alloys we could use to toughen up the armour plating?”

Equally, there will be western weapons engineers thinking about the misses, the hits that didn’t result in the destruction of the target, the misfires, the jams and balancing these against the portability of these systems - improving them whilst making them lighter and both easier and, perhaps paradoxically for a killing tool, safer to use.

Are engineers at war?

The point highlighted by Flavio, that peace contains within itself the potential for war, made me consider the fact that, even whilst developing and improving weapons, those engineers are still typically working in peace. They have entered this morally and ethically murky world of weapons development, and now inhabit it as any engineer would: working on difficult and engrossing problems to find the most appropriate solutions to them, with all that this entails - reading and understanding requirements, the generation of hypotheses and models, the testing, the iteration, the improvements and validation, accompanied as always by the documentation, the management of parts libraries, the drafting and release of specifications and drawings for the next generation of products.

This is not all treated without consideration of the human. Just as automotive engineers have to consider the safety of the occupants of their products, military drivers and operators need to arrive at the battlefield in as fresh a condition as possible, need to be able to operate such machines under the most stressful conditions imaginable, and survive to fight again. But I can well imagine that such weapons engineers see failure not in terms of blood and the death of individuals (other than, presumably, ensuring that the interior of a military vehicle remains operational even as one of its occupants bleeds to death), but in mechanical terms, in technological terms - in short, in terms of ensuring that the machine that they have designed meets specifications and requirements - and meets the cost targets.

Equally, the engineers of missiles and artillery rounds will focus on effectiveness and precision, on blast radii and the transmission of explosive energy in the most appropriate way, rather than considering what happens when such a munition hits an occupied maternity hospital - the hospital is not specified; the engineer’s targets are the specifications.

The case can be made that “our” engineers are in virtual battle against “theirs” - but this is also normal competition, just in a particular market sector.

Engineering for war, for peace

Returning to Mancuso’s point, then, I guess that the engineers themselves, assuming that they are not working under duress or coercion, most likely understand their role in society as contributing to the strengthening of their state or that of their allies, and don’t feel at all as if they are at war. They have their day jobs and families to go home to. They don’t need to worry too much about where their products are sold, although plenty of aggressor nations have bought their weapons from western companies - those are aspects that their sales and marketing colleagues, along with politicians, concern themselves with. The engineers can be distracted from ethical concerns by the need to make their products more affordable whilst retaining the “effectiveness” required of them.

Defending the defensible

However, there must be a part of them that wonders how best to answer their daughters' questions about what they do at work. I have it in my automotive industry; I’m sure others in the packaging and extractive industries have it to: all of these careers can be justified, but we need to be aware of the downsides of what we do, of the industries we work in - or of industry at all, if we take things to the extremes.

The discussion brings me back to an episode when I was doing the recruitment rounds in my final year at university. I attended an assessment day (actually an afternoon and the next morning) at Lucas Aerospace, a British supplier of electronics and flight controls: I knew they were a supplier to Airbus and Boeing, and I went into the interview with my civil aerospace blinkers on. The assessment went well, I felt, as did the interview itself, until one of the interviewers asked me: “how would you feel about working on military projects?” I genuinely hadn’t prepared for that question, and I felt it appropriate to show it - I told them straight out that I hadn’t expected that question. I then said that I would prefer not to have to work on such projects, and was sure that they had enough civil aviation projects to keep me occupied. They seemed happy with my answer, and the one who asked the question admitted that he had felt somewhat uncomfortable at working on the servo system for a helicopter pilot’s helmet guidance system for the main machine gun: the pilot would merely need to look at the target for the gun to follow his gaze and fire.

For sure, that sort of system, those semi-automated gun systems and the helicopters that carry them, can be used to defend the freedom of the country that makes them. But the whole murky world of arms exports would make me feel extremely uncomfortable with (not quite) knowing where those killing systems would end up, and in whose hands. And - well, the whole thing about killing, full stop.

In the end, the interview and assessment were moot, as Lucas Aerospace was bought by the American conglomerate TRW that summer, and they could no longer offer any jobs until recruitment was redefined. So I ended up in the automotive industry (itself not the fluffiest and magic unicorniest of industries…)

Post post: An unethical (OK - non-ethical) blog

I decided early on that I would prefer to focus on the philosophical aspects of engineering, rather than attempting to enter the ethical realm at the same time. This is not to denigrate the ethical aspects of how engineering leads to improvements in so many destructive-productive aspects of life as mining, transportation, building - and war. There’s just too much for me to learn and absorb in philosophy alone, to reflect upon and to translate into words and phrases that others might want to read, for me to try and spread myself ever more thinly into ethics.

So, from here, it’s back to thinking about the philosophy of engineering - though there's no doubt we'll stumble once more into crossing paths with the ethical.


Too much reading? Maybe. Too little writing? Yes.

I went to the town library with the family today for the first time in ages, and it was lovely. The kids enjoyed browsing in the childrens’ section and beginning to realise that there’s a lot more beyond; my wife couldn’t decide whether to look first for fact or fiction, and if in the factual section, what, exactly, did she want to discover? She settled in the end on a biography, a baking book, and a novel.

I knew exactly where to go. The last time I had been, back then, in pre-pandemic times, I had curiously and cautiously browsed the philosophy section, alighting on books about and by Jürgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer. After flicking through a few pages of each, I put them back on the shelf and left, with the feeling that I should first finish what I was reading before expanding out onto new stuff. This time around, I made a beeline for that same shelf, and grabbed Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode. The method in this new madness was that, from reading Back to the Rough Ground, Gadamer seemed more likeable to me than did Habermas; and, I wanted to challenge myself by reading a “real”, original philosophical text, rather than reading about them.

I was also genuinely curious about hermeneutics (the philosophical perspective of interpretation and understanding), and felt it would enrich rather than distract from my other current readings (more about that soon!)

As the rest of the family diffused around the library, I started on the introduction, contentedly taking notes on my mobile as I went… and swiftly realised that most of these notes were about how distracted I was (not by the phone, though, not this time!), and how I couldn’t take in the meaning; I actually wrote “reading the words, but not ‘breathing them in’”, noting that, whilst this phrase came to mind automatically, without a strategy, it felt non-random, influenced my glasses fogging up and that slight resistance in breathing from the mask I was wearing.

But slowly I was able to sink into the text and begin to grasp what it was Gadamer was trying to say - more on that later, too - and then distracted myself again by thinking: hey, wasn't one of the original points of my blog to chart my development in philosophy, not just writing fixed, monolithic-feeling essays that I keep drafting and not finishing?

Read, reflect, write

I’ve also not been charting my reading at all, nor reflecting sufficiently on it, passively or - better - by writing to express my understanding of it. Hence the title of this post: whilst I may not have been reading too much (but perhaps too widely), I certainly haven’t been writing enough.

So, in that spirit, this post: to remind myself that I wanted to be writing much more than I have been, and to be much lighter on my feet about it.


Work - a cautionary tale

My previous post was about what I term a "field perspective" of work, which started out as a tangential idea on the engineering profession and our tools and was generally a happy, contented thing. When I encountered this heartfelt account from journalist Elle Hunt about her struggles with burnout a few days ago, I had to acknowledge it. She writes very openly about it:

The crash, when it inevitably came, was more of a hard stop. At around 11.30am my hands froze on the keyboard: I simply could not type another word. Trying to will myself on was a surprisingly physical sensation. I was pushing on a pedal that had got me this far – and finding, with mounting distress, that the tank was bone dry. Closing my laptop felt like a failure.

Burnout is a negative mode to the extreme within the spectrum of strive and thrive, stumble and fail, within those fields of perceived wants and needs that lead to plans and work, all within our own professional fields as well as the personal and the grand political fields. We are often left to manage these forces and strains by ourselves; sometimes the feeling that we're unable to cope encroaches ever nearer.

Discussing the stresses of work is really important, even more so as the burnout wall approaches. The dilemma is that the closer we get to burnout, the harder it is to talk about it. Elle's take on it is the right one:

I am sharing my story not because it is exceptional, but because I’m convinced it isn’t.

It was her introduction to the book that got me reading James Suzman's Work, A History of How We Spend Our Time. Hopefully she can use the New Year to reset her relationship with work, whilst I keep firming up my own thoughts on Work: or what we do to ourselves as engineers.


About work - a field perspective

A field perspective of work and politics

Why think about work?

I was going to write about applying engineering methods to philosophy (I still plan to). Trouble was, as I got further into it, that post became more and more unwieldy as considerations popped up like: what are tools? and: what are engineers? (Philosophy, eh?) Since engineers work (as in - it’s our profession) that’s how I came to start writing about work itself, to provide a basis for those questions that, I hope, will let themselves be written about a little more easily. 

Remember: this a blog post, so it’s not definitive and I’m sure to return to the idea once I’ve read more into it (I’ve also just started reading James Suzman’s Work: A history of how we spend our time) - but… here goes!

Work: what is it good for? 

Fulfilling, defining, meaningful consumer of time; a source of satisfaction, stress and sleepless nights, of distraction from the finer points of life, or of structured relief from the chaos of family and friends, all of whom can also be… hard work. That’s work.

Have you had that experience, that if you fixate on a word in your mind for too long, it suddenly sounds ridiculous? “Work” ends up sounding like a frog’s croak or something. But before it reaches that stage, “work” can stimulate all kinds of hints and notions and emotions, whether we focus on its meaning as a verb or as a noun, or let it flicker between the two. Professions, occupations, undertakings, jobs, roles, tasks, responsibilities, duties, even hobbies and maintaining relationships: all these forms of work are, fundamentally, as in physics, a question of energy transfer. 

Without a potential or a gradient, energy will not flow. And in the case of work, without a start signal, nothing will cause that potential to rise. That potential is of a mental, emotional nature that can, at a certain threshold, signal the pumps to start up so that energy can be transferred to whatever objective we have in mind.

The signal, the “programming” of the operation and the action itself involve the bridging of some gap between a current state and a future imagined state. All of that together builds "work".

Building up the model (this is also work)

It is feasible, if unrealistic, to consider the future imagined state being precisely the same as the current state (the defining word here being “imagined”). Practically speaking, we might think of this as being the notion of maintenance activities, but maintenance is still “real” work, requiring energy. For this “zero work” scenario, we would have to imagine someone sitting in a pleasantly perfect state, with no improvement or activity imaginable. Or someone who was dead, but that path doesn’t appear to lead to any useful conclusions.

Here’s what it might look like:

[ stick man at a state column ]
Everything's perfect

This state can only last to the point at which our character becomes bored, or uncomfortable, or wet or cold, or hungry, or needs relief from previous digestive activities. A tension arises, which spans the current scenario and an imagined future state:

[ first field of intention ]
But wait... there is something that needs doing!

The tension of intention

Right now, that character can “see” and hold a new, imagined, state, in mind - a “field of intention” sounds about right as a name for this - but nothing happens yet beyond some highly complex neurological and physiological changes that prime our character for action. Mental maps are generated of where the action should take place and where appropriate utensils might be found, a general concept of how the action might be completed is mentally sketched, as is an assessment of how much energy might be expended during the undertaking - which can also lead to the conclusion: “ah, forget it”. It’s only when an action occurs, however, and physical energy is expended, that the tension can be resolved, as in the sketch below:

[ first field with arrow ]
I did a thing!

The arrow represents some kind of action, and the new state is now “real” - though it may or may not be the one that was imagined. Smashed cups, bleeding fingers or unsaved work being lost are not generally part of our imagined states, but they happen.

There might be complications...

Of course, in real life, things aren’t as simple as a single pairing of state and new state: there are near unimaginable possibilities for work and potential new states are bubbling up continuously and almost simultaneously in our minds - a major stress factor in life is often “what to work on?”:

[ a field of fields - too much to do ]
What to do?

Sometimes the answer is clear, sometimes not. Sometimes just doing nothing is… very appealing. Typically, it is rare that we can complete one task to the exclusion of all others. In the course of a day, for example, we’ll meander from task to task, completing some, making progress on others, ignoring others still.

[ meandering through our tasks ]
Meandering through the day

Each point along the meandering path actually represents a new state, where new possibilities arise, leading in some cases maybe to the sudden elimination of one possible task, or perhaps the creation of several more. This results in the “bubble” of imagined states taking on a different form (or, at least, content), with different intensities, at any point in time.

It’s the intensity, felt or understood emotionally as well as rationally, arising from all of these potential futures and actions that drives our decision making

Constraints set us free

This is not the place to discuss in depth the notion of freedom, but it seems pretty clear to most of us in these pandemic times that freedom to act also requires ensuring the safety and security of others to act. This implies social constraints that allow us to act upon our fields with confidence (because we and those around us know what is right) or - if we have nefarious or illegal intentions - we have to have to act below or around constraints, in secret, for example. These constraints also condition the array of imaginable future states. 

[ constraints keep us and society safe and secure ]
Constraints keep us and others safe

This all brings us to the next point in this - up to now - very simple sketch: other people.

If operating in society is sociable, then even engineers are sociable

Fortunately for most, to the chagrin of others, we humans don’t live or operate in isolation. We live and work within groups that build fields of tensions. Sometimes those tension fields align, and are complementary, like “we’re all hungry”, or “our spears are rubbish, we need new ones”, or “we should invest in education for our children” … and actions based on those tensions arise, not all of which - it has to be said - are complementary or coordinated, but the overall vector of which can target the imagined state:

[ group with the same tension e.g. we’re all hungry, or our spears are rubbish ]
[ group with action arrows largely heading in the same direction ]
A group of people, a jumble of actions - sometimes in general alignment

These groups may be small or large, and come from all ends of the spectrum of human activities. Some groups will be our employers. Other groups may be colleagues in other departments acting as further constraints (Finance! Sales! Purchasing! Legal!). Groups can be companies in competition within an industry, or from different fields mutually assisting one another (e.g. engineers and medics), or mutually opposing each other (environmental activists and fossil fuel energy companies).

As groups encounter other groups, societies build up, and the fields of tension become more complex still. Politics arises (also, by necessity, within our companies of employment), providing guidance and structure / infrastructure, as well as constraints - and gets messy:

[ groups of arrows and tension fields in different directions, some opposing... politics happen ]
Groups interact with groups... politics happen

Sometimes societies are largely peaceful and are able to maintain a way of life via consensus and legitimate state power: some permit autocrats or populists to come to power, who need to create and highlight enemies both from outside their society, and from within, usually distinguished by race or religion (sigh), who need to be subjugated or expunged:

[ autocratic politics ]
[ racism ]
Aren't authoritarian autocrats exceptionally lovely?

Pictorial rant aside; In any case, ideas arise from groups or individuals and need recruitment of others to perform actions with sufficient strength to achieve those goals. Recruitment also requires coordination or coercion, but these are ways of guiding or moulding the “intention field” of others.

The future imagined state from here?

The future imagined state of this blog is to have posts on what are engineers, what are tools, how the two interact, and, ultimately, for this series at least, to return to the original idea of applying engineering methods to philosophy.

Thinking back to groups: can they completely bypass each other? Perhaps, but it seems that technology and the engineers who develop it are a link to pretty much all areas of activity in the “developed” world. Think birdwatchers without the creators of binoculars or monster telescopic camera lenses. And that’s where I think we can fit engineers into society - who will be the subject of my next post.


When the Big Beasts wade in, the little mammals scurry

A retweet by Peter-Paul Verbeek (@ppverbeek) about a new book on Asian perspectives on technology by Pak-Hang Wong and Tom Xiaowei Wang, Harmonious Technology, A Confucian Ethics of Technology (which I have just preordered), also led me to discover that Carl Mitcham (who had provided "blurb" for Pak-Hang Wong's book) had also recently published a new book, Steps Toward a Philosophy of Engineering (which I have just ordered) .

As a complete amateur in the world of philosophy, there's always a sense of "why don't I give up and just read the books by the Pros?" But that would be to misunderstand philosophy; examining the life, generating our own perspectives and networks, as well as inklings of understanding, is what it's all about. The Mitchams and Verbeeks of the world can act as the fundamental physicists of life: they can discover the links and the meanings that enrich our lives, whilst we can endeavour to make use of whichever tools they fashion in the best way that we can.

And, who knows, perhaps we'll end up contributing to the design and development, the evolution of those tools, too!

As it happens, my next post is all about tools...