Abstract
Engineering is understood as a profession that involves a formative process, through which the conditions that allow the recognition of its phenomenal field and the ways to approach it are generated. The epistemological basis of the current formative process is largely conditioned by the notion of qualified problem solving. However, more than addressing the problems in all their openness, the epistemological basis promoted by this perspective does not allow to easily incorporate the variability and dynamics of the social and cultural processes that go along with their phenomena. The cause of such difficulty may be in the previous structuring of engineering problems based on a given field of solutions strongly based on the natural sciences. In this condition, problems are not dealt with to the full extent that are proper to them. In this article it is argued that problems reside in an open problematic field and that Engineering operates to extract from it the reality from the field of solutions. In this sense, an Engineering perspective is proposed that open up its meaning for educational purposes from the contributions of the philosophy of technology and engineering, in order to promote a subtle shift in the epistemological basis of the engineers education towards a privileged openness of the problematic field where the problems reside. For this, conceptual operators extracted from the thought of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze are used so that the concept of Engineering can be built on a broader and more flexible basis. The proposal is to place Engineering in the process of individuation or updating a problematic field that is always open.
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Notes
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- 2.
Based on this principle, Simondon explains the different modes of individuation of biological, psychic, collective and technical beings.
- 3.
Cf. “[…] engineering is what engineers do in their capacity as engineers” (Poel, 2010: 3).
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Aravena-Reyes, J. (2023). A Simondon-Deleuzean Characterization of Engineering Design. In: Fritzsche, A., Santa-María, A. (eds) Rethinking Technology and Engineering. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25233-4_6
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