Philosophy of Computer Science: Online Resources

Further Readings for Chapter 5:

Engineering

Note 1: Many of these items are online; links are given where they are known. Other items may also be online; an internet search should help you find them.

Note 2: In general, works are listed in chronological order. (This makes it easier to follow the historical development of ideas.)

§5.1: Defining 'Engineering':

• On the paucity of definitions of 'engineering', see:
  • Koen, B. V. (1988). Toward a definition of the engineering method. European Journal of Engineering Education, 13(3):307–315. Reprinted from Engineering Education (December 1984): 150–155.

  • Pawley, A. L. (2009). Universalized narratives: Patterns in how faculty members define 'engineering'. Journal of Engineering Education, 98(4):309–319.

• On the philosophy of engineering:
  • Simon, H. A. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial, Third Edition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,
    • Dennett 1995, p. 188, observed that the philosophy of engineering was not well developed, and singled out the 1969 first edition of Simon's book as a pioneering work in the philosophy of engineering (not philosophy of science?).

  • Popper, K. (1972). Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford University Press, Oxford,
    • Parts of this book discuss the relation of engineering to science.

  • Putnam 1987, p. 48, suggests that there are three views of engineering: as design, as application, and as construction.

  • Vincenti, W.G. (1990). What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
    • Argues that engineering is a kind of knowledge that is different from scientific knowledge.

  • Hoare, C.A.R. (2009). Retrospective: An axiomatic basis for computer programming. Communications of the ACM, 52(10):30–32.
    • Has some interesting comments on the complementary nature of pure academic research (science) and applied industrial research (engineering).

  • Mitcham, C. (2009). A philosophical inadequacy of engineering. The Monist, 92(3):339–356.
    • Commenting on Tredgold's 1828 definition of engineering, Mitcham says:
      "Engineering is commonly defined as the art or science of 'directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and the convenience of humans …' But there is nothing in engineering education or knowledge that contributes to any distinct competence in making judgments about what constitutes 'human use and convenience.' Engineering as a profession is analogous to what medicine might be if physicians had no expert knowledge of health or to law if attorneys knew nothing special about justice." (p. 339)

  • Simons, P. M. and Michael, D., editors (2009). Philosophy and Engineering. Special issue of The Monist 92(3) (July).

  • Horsman, D. C., Stepney, S.,Wagner, R. C., and Kendon, V. (2014). When does a physical system compute? Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 470(2169):1–25 (esp. §11, and esp. p. 20).
    • On the relationship between science and engineering in the context of physical computation.

  • Staples, M. (2014). Critical rationalism and engineering: Ontology. Synthese, 191(10):2255–2279.
    • Presents a deductive view of theories in engineering; definitions of engineering are discussed in §2, and the relation of engineering to science is discussed in §4.

  • Staples, M. (2015). Critical rationalism and engineering: Methodology. Synthese, 192(1):337–362.
    • A sequel containing a useful "taxonomy" (§3) of ways in which artifacts can fail to conform to specifications, a topic that is relevant to our discussions of implementation (Chapter 13) and of intended behavior (§15.1).

§5.6: The Engineering Method:

• On Heuristics:
  • Two important surveys of meanings of the term 'heuristic' are:
    • Romanycia, M. H. and Pelletier, F. J. (1985). What is a heuristic? Computational Intelligence, 1(2):47–58.

    • Chow, S. J. (2015). Many meanings of 'heuristic'. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 66:977–1016.

  • Simon, H. A. and Newell, A. (1958). Heuristic problem solving: The next advance in operations research. Operations Research, 6(1):1–10
    • Distinguishes algorithmic problem solving of "well-structured" problems from heuristic problem solving of "ill-structured" problems.
    • Also discusses the division of labor (see §6.4.3 of the book) and infamously predicts that a computer would become the world chess champion by 1968 (see §18.3.2 of the book)

  • Other discussions include:
    • Polya, G. (1957). How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method, 2nd edition. Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, NY.
      • A classic

    • Newell, A. and Simon, H. A. (1976). Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search. Communications of the ACM, 19(3):113–126.

    • Korf, R. E. (1992). Heuristics. In Shapiro, Stuart C., editor, Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, 2nd edition, pages 611–615. John Wiley & Sons, New York.

    • Shapiro, Stuart C. (1992). Artificial Intelligence. In Shapiro, Stuart C., editor, Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, 2nd edition, pages 54–57. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Revised version in Anthony Ralston, Edwin D. Reilly & David Hemmendinger (eds.), Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 4th Edition (New York: Grove's Dictionaries, 1993): 89–93.

    • Findler, N. V. (1993). Heuristic. In Ralston, A. and Reilly, E. D., editors, Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 3rd Edition, pages 611–612. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.

    • Symposium on Heuristics, Minds and Machines 5(4) (1995):467--512.
      • Contains articles by T.R. Colburn, R.E. Korf, and P. Humphreys.

  • Thagard, P. (2007). Coherence, truth, and the development of scientific knowledge. Philosophy of Science, 74:28–47.
    • Not about heuristics, but presents a theory of "approximate" truth that bears a close resemblance to the idea that a heuristic is an algorithm that computes an approximately correct answer.

§5.7: Software Engineering:

• Denning, P. J. and Riehle, R. D. (2009). Is software engineering engineering? Communications of the ACM, 52(3):24–26.

• Dewar, R. and Astrachan, O. (2009). CS education in the U.S.: Heading in the wrong direction? Communications of the ACM, 52(7):41–45.

§5.8: CS and Engineering:

• Tedre, M. (2009). Computing as engineering. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 15(8):1642–1658
  • A complementary article to Tedre 2011 on computing as a science.

• Denning, P. J. (2013). Design thinking. Communications of the ACM, 56(12):29–31.
  • A computer scientist's take on design.

• Staples 2014, §6.2, is a reply to Koen.

• Kaag, J. and Bhatia, S. K. (2014). Fools for tools: Why engineers need to become philosophers. The Chronicle [of Higher Education] Review, 61(13):B13–B15.