This book is a distinctive fusion of philosophy and technology, delineating the normative landscape that informs today s technologies and tomorrow s inventions. The authors examine what we deem to be the internal norms that govern our ever-expanding technical universe. Recognizing that developments in technology and engineering literally create our human future, transforming existing knowledge into tomorrow s tools and infrastructure, they chart the normative criteria we use to evaluate novel technological artifacts: how, for example, do we judge a good from a bad expert system or nuclear...

This edited volume explores the interplay between philosophies in a wide-ranging analysis of how technological applications in science inform our systems of thought. Beginning with a historical background, the volume moves on to explore a host of topics, such as the uses of technology in scientific observations and experiments, the salient relationship between technology and mechanistic notions in scienceand the ways in which today s vast and increasing computing power helps scientists achieve results that were previously unattainable.

Technology allows today s researchers to gather,...

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents.

Whether and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this debate is given...

This second companion volume on engineering studies considers engineering practice including contextual analyses of engineering identity, epistemologies and values. Key overlapping questions examine such issues as an engineering identity, engineering self-understandings enacted in the professional world, distinctive characters of engineering knowledge and how engineering science and engineering design interact in practice.

Authors bring with them perspectives from their institutional homes in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. The volume includes 24 contributions by more than...

This combination of historiography and theory offers the growing Anglophone readership interested in the ideas of Gilbert Simondon a thorough and unprecedented survey of the French philosopher's entire oeuvre. The publication, which breaks new ground in its thoroughness and breadth of analysis, systematically traces the interconnections between Simondon's philosophy of science and technology on the one hand, and his political philosophy on the other.

The author sets Simondon's ideas in the context of the epistemology of the late 1950s and the 1960s in France, the milieu...

This volume identifies, discusses and addresses the wide array of ethical issues that have emerged for engineers due to the rise of a global economy. To date, there has been no systematic treatment of the particular challenges globalization poses for engineering ethics standards and education. This volume concentrates on precisely this challenge. Scholars and practitioners from diverse national and professional backgrounds discuss the ethical issues emerging from the inherent symbiotic relationship between the engineering profession and globalization. Through their discussions a deeper and...

Hoping to help transform engineering into a more socially just field of practice, this book offers various perspectives and strategies while highlighting key concepts and themes that help readers understand the complex relationship between engineering education and social justice. This volume tackles topics and scopes ranging from the role of Buddhism in socially just engineering to the blinding effects of ideologies in engineering to case studies on the implications of engineered systems for social justice.

This book aims to serve as a framework for interventions or strategies to...

This volume features 16 essays on the philosophy of technology that discuss its identity, its position in philosophy in general, and the role of empirical studies in philosophical analyses of engineering ethics and engineering practices.

This volume is published about fifteen years after Peter Kroes and Anthonie Meijers published a collection of papers under the title The empirical turn in the philosophy of technology, in which they called for a reorientation toward the practice of engineering, and sketched the likely benefits for philosophy of technology of pursuing its major...

This volume, the result of an ongoing bridge building effort among engineers and humanists, addresses a variety of philosophical, ethical, and policy issues emanating from engineering and technology. Interwoven through its chapters are two themes, often held in tension with one another: Exploring Boundaries and Expanding Connections. Expanding Connections highlights contributions that look to philosophy for insight into some of the challenges engineers face in working with policy makers, lay designers, and other members of the public. It also speaks to reflections included in this volume...

This book is devoted to discussion of the views of Pierre Musso and starts with a central chapter written by Musso, entitled Network Ideology: from Saint-Simonianism to the Internet . Pierre Musso is a French philosopher and is one of the most original thinkers in the history of the network society. His thought develops a critique of information and communication technologies through their imaginary and social representations and of the information society, based on the network metaphor.

The main question on which Musso has focused his attention is how the network metaphor is one of...