Week 7 Readings

I apparently forgot to post this earlier, but here it is nevertheless...

The Layton article intrigued me. It seemed to focus almost if not entirely on engineering societies and their definitions of an engineer with specific regard to membership. Essentially the "lens" that he was using to view the definition of an engineer was that of professional societies.

It seems that membership requirements for professional engineering societies is orthogonal to whether or not an individual is considered an engineer. In particular, the fact that some try so hard to include managers who no longer practice engineeringFor a particular example, Layton continually discusses the fact that some societies tried to allow managerial counterparts into their society (individuals that presumably used to hold an engineering position).

The three chapters by Noble seemed to dance with the notion that engineers were at their heart businessmen. The lens he used was more industrial.

Gieryn's paper was particularly odd. He seemed to seriously struggle with the definition of science. I was perplexed by his difficulty in defining it, and establishing its boundaries.

Science is simple - it's the practice of the scientific method, which we all learned it in middle school if not grade school. For something to be considered scientific knowledge it has to be falsifiable, among other things.

I think the three papers combined start to unveil the actual boundaries and definition of an engineer. In that regard, a good set of readings.