Engineering is, in its most general sense, turning an idea into a reality – creating and u
sing tools to accomplish a task or fulfil a purpose. The word ‘engineer’ derives not, as y
ou might imagine, from being-someone-who- deals-with-engines but rather from its Latin roo
t ingeniarius, Old French engignier, and Middle English engyneour to mean someone who is i
ngenious in solving practical problems. Man’s ability to make tools is remarkable. But it
is his ingenious ability to make sense of the world and use his tools to make even more se
nse and even more ingenious tools, that makes him exceptional. To paraphrase Winston Churc
hill, ‘we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us’. Tools are part of what it is to b
e human. In the words of Henry Petroski, ‘To engineer is human’.Yet for many, there is a d
isturbing cloud. Once tools were simple common sense – almost all were understandable to t
he intelligent layperson. Since the Industrial Revolution, the interior workings of many t
ools have become mysterious, complex, and opaque to all but specialists. The culture of op
position between the arts, religion, science, and technology has widened and is often anta
gonistic. Matthew Crawford has accused engineers of hiding the works, ‘rendering many of t
he devices we depend on every day unintelligible to direct inspection’. On the other hand,
Brian Arthur has described a process he calls ‘structural deepening’ in which engineers i
nevitably add complexity as they strive to enhance performance. There is an increasing rea
lization that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are intertwined in
a way that needs disentangling. This is urgent because engineering is so intimately part o
f who we are that effective democratic regulation requires us to understand something of w
hat engineering offers, what it might offer in the future, and, perhaps most importantly,
what it cannot ever deliver.Our journey through engineering will be broad and deep. We wil
l explore in this chapter the relevance of engineering to many aspects of modern life, inc
luding fine art and religious faith. Depth will be manifest in later chapters, as we inves
tigate how complex physical processes have been harnessed, for example to make a transisto
r. We will discover the excitement of facing difficult and important challenges, such as t
he spanning of a large river with a big bridge. We will become more contemplative in the f
inal chapter, as we probe the creative thinking needed to engage with the new age of syste
ms complexity and the need for a fresh approach to dealing with uncertainty.All through hi
story, people have expressed their awe, wonder, spirituality, and faith by making tools –
especially for religious ritual. It was one way of coping with fear, pain, and the mysteri
es of the unknown. Pyramids connected this world to the afterlife. Church art, paintings,
and sculpture were ways of creating a mood for devotion and the telling of the Christian s
tory. From ancient tablets of stone to present-day LCD (liquid crystal display) screens, f
rom horse-drawn carts to space rockets, from stone arches to cable-stayed bridges, from py
ramids to skyscrapers, from the moveable type of the printing press to the integrated circ
uits of computers, from the lyre to the music synthesizer, from carrier pigeons to the int
ernet, our tools have become ever more powerful and conspicuous.Imagine waking up in the m
orning, attempting to switch on your light or radio, but finding that everything provided
by engineers had gone. Many disaster movies rely on this kind of idea. Suddenly there is n
o electricity, no heating, and no water through the tap. You have no car, and there are no
buses, trains, no buildings and no bridges. At the beginning of the 21st century, almost
everything we rely on is a product of the activities of engineers and scientists. Of cours
e, just because you rely on something doesn’t mean you must find it interesting. After all
, few drivers want to know in detail what is happening under the bonnet of a car. Matthew
Crawford, in his book The Case for Working with Your Hands, argues that each of us is stru
ggling for some measure of self-reliance or individual agency in a world where thinking an
d doing have been systematically separated. We want to feel that our world is intelligible
so we can be responsible for it. We feel alienated by impersonal, obscure forces. Some pe
ople respond by growing their own food, some by taking up various forms of manual craftwor
k. Crawford wants us to reassess what sort of work is worthy of being honoured, since prod
uctive labour is the foundation of all prosperity. Of course, technical developments will
continue, but as Crawford argues, we need to reassess our relationship with them. Just as
a healthy lifestyle is easier if you have some empathy with your body and how it is perfor
ming, so you might drive better if you have some rapport with the workings of your car. In
the same way, perhaps a fulfilled life is more likely if you have some harmony with the t
hings you rely on and some feeling of why sometimes they don’t perform as you might wish.O
ne only has to think of the railways, the internal combustion engine, the contraceptive pi
ll, the telephone, the digital computer, and social networking to realize that technical c
hange profoundly affects social change. Economists such as Will Hutton and Richard Lipsey
argue that technological development is fundamental to economic progress. Historians argue
about the drivers of the British Industrial Revolution of the late 17th and early 18th ce
nturies, but all recognize the profound social changes resulting from the exploitation of
coal and iron, the building of canals, the development of clever new machines such as the
spinning jenny and cotton gin for the textile industry. Nevertheless, many people still re
gard the products of engineering as morally and ethically neutral – in other words, they a
re intrinsically neither bad nor good. What is important, according to this view, is how w
e humans use them. But engineering is value-laden social activity – our tools have evolved
with us and are totally embedded in their historical, social, and cultural context. Our w
ay of life and the objects we use go hand in hand – they are interdependent parts of our c
ulture. Transport is a good example. The canal network opened up possibilities for trade.
The steam engine and the railways created new opportunities for people to travel. Communic
ations were transformed. The consequent social changes were large. They affected the place
s people chose to live. They enabled people to take seaside holidays. They transported nat
ural resources such as coal and iron much faster than canal barges. Different kinds of fre
sh food became widely available. Newspapers and mail were distributed quickly. These socia
l changes led to a cultural ‘climate’ where further technologies such as the internal comb
ustion engine and road transport could flourish.Whilst it may seem impossible for non-spec
ialists to influence technological developments of this kind, informed debate about them i
s essential in a healthy democracy. A modern example is our collective response to the thr
eat of climate change. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the arguments about whether
we humans are contributing to a global average temperature rise, there seems to be little
doubt that we are going to experience a period of more and more extreme weather events. Cl
imate change does not threaten the planet – it threatens us and our way of life. If we do
not cope well, millions of people will suffer unnecessarily. We have collectively to under
stand better what we can and cannot expect of our infrastructure in the future so we can m
anage the risks as effectively as we can. That requires an understanding of what it is rea
sonable or unreasonable to expect of engineering and technology.Engineering directly influ
ences the way in which we humans express our deepest emotions in religion and in art. The
London Millennium Bridge is just one example of building as a way of commemorating a signi
ficant anniversary – it isn’t just a river crossing. Even when we want to express naked po
wer, we build structures – the old medieval castles with drawbridges are examples. Modern
skyscrapers demonstrate the economic power of multinational companies. A completely differ
ent example is how technology has changed musical styles. Amplification and projection of
the voice of an opera singer derives from resonance in the head, the chest, and indeed the
whole body. Bel canto, or the art of beautiful singing, in 17th- and 18th-century Italy c
ultivated embellishment through ornaments such as cadenzas, scales, and trills which decli
ned as the size, power, and volume of the orchestra increased. By the end of the 19th cent
ury, singers had to find even more power, but then came recording and electrical amplifica
tion, whereby balance between singer and orchestra could be achieved by twiddling a knob.
Now singers of popular music use different techniques of larynx position and abdominal con
trol of breath because sheer power is not needed. Much of modern music uses amplified elec
tronic equipment, enabling new ways of self-expression.If engineering is about making and
using tools, then we need to be very clear what we mean. A tool is anything used to do wor
k, and work is effort or exertion to fulfil a purpose. A hammer, a drill, and a saw are ob
vious examples. Tools in an industrial workshop may be a lathe, a welding torch, or a pres
s. In each case, the work being done is clear. Less evidently perhaps, other tools in the
home such as a kettle, a cooker, and a refrigerator do work by heating and cooling. We wil
l explore work and heat in Chapter 3 when we look at engines that use heat to power planes
, boats, trains, and cars. Back in the home, we can even regard chairs as tools for sittin
g, although it is not obvious how chairs do any work. In fact, as we will explore in Chapt
er 2, they do it by responding to your weight as you sit down with ‘ever-so-slight’ moveme
nt. Bridges and buildings respond to the traffic passing over them in a very similar way.
Buildings are tools for living. Obvious office tools include a desk, pencil, and paper, bu
t a modern office requires telephones, computers, and the internet. We use these tools to
process information and the work they do is electromagnetic, as we shall see in Chapters 4
and 5. Electronic musical instruments, media, arts, and entertainment such as sound and v
ideo recordings, radio, television, and mobile communications all rely on electromagnetic
work.Some tools are very obvious, like a screwdriver, and some not so obvious, like an art
ificial hip. Some are big, like a bridge or a water reservoir, whereas some are very small
, like a silicon chip or a wood screw. Some are useful, like a food mixer, and some are ma
inly for entertainment, like a television or DVD player. Some are destructive and involve
significant ethical issues, like weapons of war or torture. Some tools are complex systems
, like an airport or the internet, and some are simple, like a safety pin or a paper cl
ip. However, they all have one thing in common – they work to fulfil a human purpose, whet
her good or malevolent.It is indisputable that engineering is at the heart of society. But
perhaps you are already thinking that all of these things – especially computers and the
internet – are the work of scientists. As we said earlier, the words science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics are often used interchangeably even though good dictionaries
are clear enough. They tell us that science is a branch of knowledge which is systematic,
testable, and objective. Technology is the application of science for practical purposes.
Engineering is the art and science of making things such as engines, bridges, buildings, c
ars, trains, ships, aeroplanes, chemical plant, mobile phones, and computers. Mathematics
is the logical systematic study of relationships between numbers, shapes, and processes ex
pressed symbolically. Art and craft are closely related. Art is difficult to define but is
a power of the practical intellect, the ability to make something of more than ordinary s
ignificance. Craft is an art, trade, or occupation requiring special skills – especially m
anual skill. But the boundaries are not obvious – for example, was Stradivari a craftsman
or an artist? The outstanding qualities of his violins have yet to be surpassed by modern
techniques. So put simply, science is what we know, art is making extraordinary things, en
gineering is making useful things, technology is applied science, mathematics is a tool an
d a language, and craft is a special skill. It seems, therefore, that we have to conclude
that the cloud around these terms derives from the history of their development.Our achiev
ements based on science speak for themselves. Cool, clear rational thinking works. But doe
s it work for everything? Science is powerful because we can coordinate its various parts
so that ideas fit together into a coherent whole. We can share it – it isn’t subjective an
d personal like an emotion. We can repeat it – it isn’t a single experience but is somethi
ng that we can test and validate in independent ways. However, science is not complete – i
t is not an all-powerful way of getting at the absolute Truth about the actual physical wo
rld ‘out there’. Our understanding depends on context in subtle and complex ways. It can a
lways be, and is being constantly, improved. Whenever we act onscientific knowledge, there
is inevitably the possibility of unintended consequences, as the philosopher Karl Popper
pointed out.