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Raising a new Generation of Leaders
GET121—Engineer-In-Society
Module 1
History, Evolution and Philosophy of Science.
Coordinated
by Prof.
Dr. Amuta E.O Agbetuyi
[Link]
Raising a new Generation of Leaders
Introduction
• Improvement and development have made the entire
human race to depend on innovations in technology
• The prime mover of innovations in technology is ‘the
Engineer’
• Foundation of engineering started from creation
(Gen.1:1-2).
• Based on God’s experience ‘the engineer’ face the act of
having to think, design , analyze and construct. Hence
engineering is God’s own profession
• The work of an engineer is always distinct and hence
must be reckoned with.
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Introduction
• The characteristic of human beings is that we
develop tools and technology to adapt our
environment to meet our needs.
• Engineers contribute to the development of
many innovations that improve life.
• We shall consider examples of how engineering
has dramatically improved society.
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History of Engineering
• Engineering has existed since ancient times when humans
devised inventions such as the wedge, lever, wheel, and pulley.
• The term engineering is derived from the Latin ingenium (c. 1250),
meaning “cleverness,” “to devise, i.e., meaning “innate quality,
especially mental power, hence a clever invention. (literally, one
who operates an engine) referred to as “a construction of military
engines, an “engine” military machine.
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History of Engineering
• As the design of civilian structures, such as bridges and
buildings, matured into a technical discipline, the term Civil
Engineering entered the lexicon as a way to distinguish
between those specializing in the construction of such non-
military projects and those involved in the discipline
of military engineering.
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A. History of Engineering- Ancient Era
• The Ancient Roman Empire
built aqueducts to bring a
steady supply of clean and
fresh water to cities and towns
in the empire.
The Pont du Gard is an aqueduct in
the south of France constructed by
the Roman Empire.
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History of Engineering- Ancient Era
• One of the most significant
engineering accomplishments in
the ancient world, and certainly
one of the best-known, was the
construction of the Egyptian
pyramids. The Egyptian pyramids
were built from approximately
2700 to 2200 BC. The Egyptian pyramids at Giza.
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History of Engineering- Ancient Era
• The Acropolis and the
Parthennon in Greece,Via Appia,
the Colosseum, Teothuacán, the Great
Wall of China, the Brihadeeswarar
Temple of Thanjavur, among many
others, stand as a testament to the
ingenuity and skill of ancient civil and
military engineers.
Acropolis and the Parthenon, Greece
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History of Engineering- Ancient Era
Great Wall of China
Colosseum in Rome
Brihadeeswarar Temple of Thanjavur
in India
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History of Engineering- Ancient Era
Other monuments, no longer standing, such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and
the Pharos of Alexandria, were important engineering achievements of their time and
were considered among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
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History of Engineering- Ancient Era
• The earliest civil engineer known by the name Imhotep is one of the officials of the
Pharaoh Djosèr, he probably designed and supervised the construction of the Pyramid
of Djoser (the Step Pyramid) at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630–2611 BC.
• Ancient Greece developed machines in both civilian and military domains.
• The first known mechanical computer, and the mechanical inventions
of Archimedes are examples of early mechanical engineering.
• Some of Archimedes’ inventions required sophisticated knowledge of differential
gearing or epicyclic gearing, two critical principles in machine theory that helped
design the gear trains of the Industrial Revolution, and are still widely used today in
diverse fields such as robotics and automotive engineering.
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B. History of Engineering- Renaissance era
• The first steam engine was built in 1698 by Thomas Savery. The
development of this device gave rise to the Industrial Revolution,
allowing for the beginnings of mass production.
• With the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, the
term became more narrowly applied to fields in which mathematics
and science were applied to.
• Similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering, the fields then
known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering
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C. History of Engineering- Modern era
• The International Space Station Steam Engines
represents a modern engineering
challenge for many disciplines One significant technological
change during the Industrial
Revolution was replacing water,
wind, human, and animal power
with machine power. This first
occurred in the development of the
steam engine.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• The inventions of Thomas Newcomen and James Watt gave
rise to modern mechanical engineering.
• The development of specialized machines and machine
tools during the Industrial Revolution led to the rapid
growth of mechanical engineering.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• Structural engineers working on NASA’s Mars-bound spacecraft, (the
Phoenix Mars Lander)
• John Smeaton was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer and is often
regarded as the “father” of civil engineering. He was an English civil
engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours,
and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an
eminent physicist. Smeaton designed the third Eddystone lighthouse
John Smeaton
(1755–59), where he pioneered the use of ‘hydraulic lime‘ (a form lighthouse
of mortar that is set under water) and developed a technique involving
dovetailed blocks of granite in the building of the lighthouse.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• His lighthouse remained in use until 1877 . It was dismantled and partially rebuilt
at Plymouth Hoe, where it is known as Smeaton’s Tower. He is important in the
history, rediscovery of, and development of modern cement because he
identified the compositional requirements needed to obtain “hydraulicity” in
lime, work which ultimately led to the invention of Portland cement.
• The United States census of 1850 listed the occupation of “engineer” for the first
time with a count of 2,000. There were fewer than 50 engineering graduates in
the U.S. before 1865.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• In 1870 there were a dozen U.S. mechanical engineering
graduates, with that number increasing to 43 per year in 1875. In
1890, there were 6,000 engineers in civil, mining, mechanical, and
electrical.
• There was no chair of applied mechanics at Cambridge until
1875, and no chair of engineering at Oxford until 1907. Germany
established technical universities earlier.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• The inventions of the vacuum tube and the transistor further accelerated the development of
electronics to such an extent that electrical and electronics engineers currently out number
their colleagues of any other engineering specialty.
• Chemical engineering was developed in the late nineteenth century. Industrial-scale
manufacturing demanded new materials and processes.
• By 1880, the need for large-scale production of chemicals was such that a new industry was
created and dedicated to developing and manufacturing chemicals in new industrial
plants. The chemical engineer’s role was to design these chemical plants and processes.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
Textiles
• One industry that the Industrial Revolution
transformed was the creation of textiles
(cloth).
• The first cotton mill in England was opened in
1764. Before this time, the majority of cloth
produced in England was wool.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
Electricity: The foundations of electrical engineering came in the 1800s
• By 1870, scientists such as Michael Faraday (1791–1867) and James Maxwell
(1831–1879) had provided a firm theoretical understanding of electricity.
Electricity was widely used in communications—the telegraph made long-
distance communication instantaneous. Electricity was supplied to the
telegraph by a battery or an inefficient generator, which was still very
expensive.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• The work of James Maxwell (see Maxwell’s equations)
and Heinrich Hertz in the late 19th century gave rise to electronics.
and the electric motor in 1872.
• A dynamo is a machine that converts rotational energy supplied by
a steam engine or waterwheel into electrical energy. During the
1870s, dynamos were developed that provided efficient methods of
generating electricity. This set the stage for the development and
widespread use of the lightbulb.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
Mechanical Printing
• The setting type process remained
unchanged for 400 years after 1480.
Letter molds were cast by hand and
were hand-assembled into rows and
The steam press was invented by
pages of text. Friedrich Koenig in 1814
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History of Engineering- Modern era
In 1903, Henry Ford created the Ford Motor Company. He aimed to
produce an affordable, reliable car that an average American
farmer or worker could purchase. The Ford Company adopted all
the techniques necessary for mass production using an assembly
line. These techniques include:
• Use of standardized parts.
• Specialized labor—each worker performed a particular
operation in assembling a Model T.
• Moving assembly line—partially assembled vehicles were
A restored Ford Model T.
moved automatically down the line.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
Radio: Beginning in 1894, Guglielmo Marconi (1874–
1937), an Italian inventor, began experimenting with
radio transmitters and receivers to create a system of
“wireless telegraphy”—a system that could transmit
information much as the telegraph did, but without the
need for wires to connect transmitter and receiver.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• Electronics and the Computer: The development of the computer has had a
significant effect on the society, just as any previous engineering advancement
has. Today, computers are involved in every aspect of our lives. Beginning in the
1910s and continuing through the 1950s and 1960s, the vacuum tube was the
primary technology used to implement electronic devices such as radios,
televisions, and other myriad inventions.
• However, tubes had several drawbacks—they were large, required large amounts
of power, and were relatively fragile. In 1990, with the rise of computer technology,
the first search engine was built by computer engineer Alan Emtage.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
• Aeronautical engineering deals with aircraft design process while aerospace
engineering is a more modern term that expands the reach of the discipline by
including spacecraft design. Its origins can be traced back to the aviation pioneers around
the start of the 20th century although the work of Sir George Cayley has recently been
dated as being from the last decade of the 18th century.
• Early knowledge of aeronautical engineering was largely empirical with some concepts
and skills imported from other branches of engineering.
• The first PhD in engineering (technically, applied science and engineering) awarded in the
USA went to Josiah Willard Gibbs at Yale University in 1863; it was also the second PhD
awarded in science in the U.S.
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History of Engineering- Modern era
The Boeing 777
• Only a decade after the successful flights by the Wright brothers, there was
extensive development of aeronautical engineering through the development
of military aircraft that were used in World War I.
• The first powered airplane flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903 began a
sequence of engineering and technical innovation that has led to today’s
modern commercial and military aircraft. Significant advances along this path
include the development of reliable and powerful engines.
• Initially, these engines were gasoline-powered piston engines; in the 1940s, jet
engines were developed and have since been improved to create today’s
highly efficient turbofan engines.
The cockpit of the Boeing 777.
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Philosophy of Science
It is a branch of Philosophy concerned
with the assumptions, foundations,
methods, and implications of science
and the merit of science.
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Philosophy of Science
Philosophy is a field that deals specifically with science, how it
works, and the world through which we build scientific
knowledge.
• •Knowledge: These are information, facts, truths, and
principles learned/gathered over time.
• •Science: This system of ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE involves
using OBSERVATION and EXPERIMENTATION to describe
and explain NATURAL PHENOMENA.
• •Science is the methodology by which we find answers to
questions. It asks questions such as is it possible? It is about
acquiring knowledge of the natural phenomenon along with
the reasons for such phenomenon
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Concepts of Philosophy of Science
•Epistemology: what knowledge is and how knowledge is
acquired.
•Empiricism: A pursuit of knowledge through experience,
especially by means of observation and sometimes by
experiments and not just theory.
•Induction: derivation of general principles from specific
instances
•Deduction: the process of reasoning that moves from the
general to the specific in which the conclusion follows
necessarily from the premises presented so that the
conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true.
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Concepts of Philosophy of Science
• Parsimony/Occam’srazor: the principle of using the least resources or
explanation to solve a problem
• Falsification: the act or process of making a report, evidence, accounts,
or other information false or inaccurate by alteration, esp with the intent to
deceive.
• Paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions: is a fundamental change in
the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline
• Demarcation problem:
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Concepts of Philosophy of Science: Scientific Demarcation
•The demarcation problem refers to the distinction between science and non-science
(including pseudoscience); Karl Popper called this the central question in the philosophy
of science. However, no unified account of the scientific demarcation problem has won
acceptance among philosophers.
Positivist View:
• Science was grounded in observation and non-science was non-observational and
hence meaningless.
• Positivists believe that all sciences share the same methodological concepts and
philosophy of science, and their ideas are based on an examination of the natural
sciences.
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Scientific Demarcation cont’d
Scientific Realism and Instrumentalism
➢Scientific realists claim that science aims at truth and that
one ought to regard scientific theories as true,
approximately true, or likely true.
➢Scientific antirealists or instrumentalists argue that
science does not aim (or at least does not succeed) at truth
and that it is a mistake to regard scientific theories as even
potentially true.
•Some antirealists claim that scientific theories aim at being
instrumentally useful and should only be regarded as useful,
but not true descriptions of the world.
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Scientific Demarcation cont’d
•Despite the diverse opinions,
philosophers of science can largely agree
on one thing: there is no single, simple
way to define science
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Concepts of Philosophy of Science: Scientific Explanation
A scientific theory has explanatory power.
• Scientific Explanation is in Two Major Forms:
• Deductive Nomological(D-N) model:
The model says that a scientific explanation
succeeds by subsuming or placing a
phenomenon under a general law –Carl G
Hempel and Paul Oppenheim (1948).
• An explanation is defined as a valid
deductive argument.
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Scientific Explanation Cont’d
• Wesley Salmon developed an alternative statistical model
to proffer solution to account for some of the problems
with Hempel and Oppenheim’s model. His model states
that a good scientific explanation must be statistically
relevant to the outcome to be explained.
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Concepts of Philosophy of Science: Analysis and Reductionism
•Analysis is the activity of breaking an observation or theory down into simpler concepts in order to
understand it. For example, the task of describing mathematically the motion of a projectile is made easier by
separating out the force of gravity, angle of projection, and initial velocity. After such analysis, it is possible to
formulate a suitable theory of motion.
•Reductionism can refer to one of the several philosophical positions related to this approach. One type of
reductionism is the belief that all fields of study are ultimately amenable (agreeable) to scientific
explanation. E.g., Perhaps a historical event might be explained in sociological and psychological terms, which
in turn might be described in terms of chemistry and physics.
•Daniel Dennett invented the term greedy reductionism to describe the assumption that such reductionism was
possible. He claims that it is just ‘bad science,’ seeking to find appealing, rather than those that are useful in
predicting natural phenomena.
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Concepts of Philosophy of Science: Grounds of Validity of Scientific Reasoning
• Empirical verification
• Science relies on evidence to validate its theories and
models, and the predictions implied by those
theories, and models should agree with observation.
• Ultimately, observations are reduced to those made by
the unaided human senses: sight, hearing, etc.
• To be accepted by most scientists, several impartial,
competent observers should agree on what is
observed.
• Observations should be repeatable.
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Concepts of Philosophy of Science: Practical Challenges with Empirical Verification
•Inductivism
• How can scientists state it is universally true? But can one
ever be sure that future tests will continue to support this
conclusion?
• One solution to this problem is to rely on the notion of
induction.
• Inductive reasoning maintains that if a situation holds in all
observed cases, then the situation holds in all cases.
• Induction somehow allows one to formulate a general truth from
a series of specific observations
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Practical Challenges with Empirical Verification Cont’d
•Duhem-Quine Thesis: States that
• it is impossible to test a theory in isolation. One must always add auxiliary hypotheses in
order to make testable predictions.
• One consequence of the Duhem-Quine thesis is that any theory can be made compatible
with any empirical observation by the addition of a sufficient number of suitable ad hoc
hypotheses.
• This is why science uses Occam’s Razor; that is, hypotheses without sufficient
justification are eliminated. This thesis was accepted by Karl Popper, leading him to reject
naïve falsification in favor of ‘survival of the fittest’, or most falsifiable, of scientific theories
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Practical Challenges with Empirical Verification cont’d
•Theory-Dependence of Observations
• When making observations, scientists look through telescopes, study images on
electronic screens, record meter readings, etc. Generally, on a basic level, they can
agree on what they see, e.g., the thermometer shows 37.9⁰C. But, if these scientists
have different ideas about the theories that have been developed to explain these
basic observations, they can interpret them in different ways.
• Observations, when interpreted by a scientist’s theories are said to be theory-
laden.
• Observation involves both perception as well as cognition
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Practical Challenges with Empirical Verification Cont’d
•Theory-Dependence of Observations Cont’d
• More importantly, most scientific observations must be made within a
theoretical context in order for them to be useful.
• Observation is a cognitive act; that is, it relies on our existing
understanding, our set of beliefs.
• “All science must start with some assumptions as to the ultimate analysis
of the facts with which it deals.
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Practical Challenges with Empirical Verification Cont’d
•Coherentism
• Foundationalism claims that there are some basic statements that do not
require justification. Both induction and falsification are forms of
foundationalism in that they rely on basic statements.
• Coherentism offers an alternative to foundationalism by claiming that
statements can be justified by their being part of a coherent system.
• In the case of science, the system is usually taken to be the complete set of
beliefs of an individual scientist or, more broadly, of the community of scientists
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See u next class
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