Philosophy of Engineering, or the Lack Thereof, or the Need to Lack Thereof
I had a good discussion up in Norman last week regarding the ridiculousness of a PhD in engineering. Meaning that a Doctor of Philosophy has no business walking around in a field only “pure” in the sense that it should lack purity entirely. It turns out that the whole overlay of academia onto the engineering field is a misguided typecasting and overgeneralization.
The advent of the “Engineering Physics” degree only reinforces the lunacy going on right now. I spoke with an EPhys student who is currently taking Physical Math II and an Electricity & Magnetism class that could be described as abstruse at best. By all measures this is a Physics student goofing around in design classes, so let’s start calling this pursuit Applied Physics.
Applied Physics is not the same as Engineering. The engineer plots aerodynamic data tables from experiments and then validates with theory. The physicist plots his own data tables from theory and then validates with experiment. The concordant meeting in the middle is the sweet spot of economic value.
A PhD in Physics, under this rough-cut definition, is completely sensible. One begins with philosophy and stops designing with the completion of a validating experimental setup. In the abstract process, the engineer would pick up the theory from this point and make something that people either want to buy, use, or even just look at.
The way it works in practice is often somewhat the reverse, as in my oft-cited thermodynamics / steam engine example, in which theory ran and played catch-up with an already-established field of practical application.
I feel like a contributor to my performance in engineering education was certainly my preference for the theoretical. In other words, I feel like I’m a better physicist than an engineer. I really don’t think I’m particularly suited for direct commercial work in either field, although I do like applying principles from both fields in my work.
The tragedy is that my leaning toward Physics actually set me up to be a “good engineer,” while those able to work for hours at a time in the machine shop banging out custom auto parts, mufflers, frame structures, et al., were often poor-performing students from a grading perspective. What a shame!
I’m definitely not attempting to say physics and the pure sciences does not have a role in quality engineering education. My beef is mainly as one climbs the academic ladder, where we see the bent toward establishing new “sciences” around various interesting topics: fracture mechanics, aerodynamics, reaction chemistry, etc., etc.
Ask a Chemical Engineer what they think about the pure Chemistry program in their college. You’ll probably get a snort. But ask them what the coolest jobs are in their field, and they’ll likely phrase something to you that sounds a lot like pure Chemistry.
Engineering has simply become a label for a science degree that makes money. Pure scientists all over the place are beginning to style themselves engineers, and for good reason: the demand right now is for equations (as opposed to curve fits). Electrical engineers can get remarkably far into their programs before they know what a 555 op amp looks like in person, or to be able to tell a diode from a resistor on a breadboard. Let alone to know what a breadboard is, for goodness sakes.
Personally, I think that Phi Beta Kappa’s snubbing of engineering back in the mining and railroad days was a big reason for this “corruption” (or perhaps “purification”). Rather than advancing in their pursuit of an applied focus, engineering is being persistently bent toward an offshoot science for each of its major fields.
Teaching, also snubbed by the venerable PBK along with business, may be a exemplar for the “right way” to go about things; despite the naming, a PhD in education is often a practitioner, working from experience (probably the closest a behavioral psychologist can get to a curve fit), sharing acquired experiential knowledge.
Business is about half there, but crusty academia can still poke through in many cases, especially in somewhat theory-friendly areas such as capital structuring (including most notable the great “Why isn’t everyone 100% debt financed if it’s theoretically advantageous?” debate).
Teaching even has its thorns, especially in the area of classroom management. This creates the sinusoid amongst the competing “correct Johnny through smiles and hugs” and the “beat the poop out of Johnny until he complies” schools, as well as driving the “should gifted children be put in classes with average students?” debate. These types of areas are when PhDs really earn their Ph.
Engineering might be best to join plumbing and carpentry in the idea of the apprentice, journeyman, and master classifications, while still requiring extensive academic study (essentially, modify the pedogogy but keep the bachelor’s degree). But the idea of a PhD in an experimental or experiential field largely needs to go the way of alchemy, perhaps the most engineering-oriented of all fields: economically interesting and theoretically nauseating.
