Epistemic Implications of Engineering Rhetoric
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Bucciarelli_Epistemic Implications.pdf
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Author(s)
Bucciarelli, Louis
Date Issued
June 2009
Journal
Synthese
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Citation
Louis Bucciarelli, “The epistemic implications of engineering rhetoric,” Synthese 168, no. 3 (June 1, 2009): 333-356.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The texts (and talk) of engineers take different forms. In this essay, I present and critique several texts written
for different purposes and audiences but all intended to convey to the reader the technical details of whatever
they are about - whether a textbook passage describing the fundamental behavior of an electrical component,
a journal article about a mathematical technique intended for use in design optimization, a memo to co-work-
ers within a firm about a heat transfer analysis of a remotely sited building, or a general introduction to the
field of ‘ergonomics’. My aim is to explore how the ways in which engineers describe and document their
problems and projects frame what they accept, display and profess as useful knowledge. In this I am particu-
larly interested in how engineers envision the 'users' of, or participants in, their productions.
Like science, engineering texts are written as if they were timeless and untainted by socio-cultural features. A
technical treatise is not devoid of metaphor or creative rendering of events; there is always a narrative within
which worldly data and instrumental logic is embedded - but it is a story in which the passive voice prevails,
history is irrelevant, and the human actor or agent is painted in quantitative parameters fitting the occasion.
Whether this rhetoric can be sustained in the face of challenges to traditional ways of doing engineering is an
open question.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Engineering
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9454-z
