Terry Bristol | Portland State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Terry Bristol
Philosophy of engineering and technology, 2018
The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy ... more The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview. Engineering is not ‘merely’ applied science. Engineering knowledge requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework than scientific knowledge.
Politics and the Life Sciences, Aug 1, 1986
Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it ... more Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it only contaminates techno-scientific enterprises. However, the new, professional nurse is aware of the need for political understanding and political skills. The transformation of the socio-economic status of the health care industry from a social service to a business provides an excellent opportunity for introducing the nursing student to political thought in a positive conjunction with practical analysis. To generate a credible metapolitical framework, I embrace rather than avoid the current problems about the nature of the subject matter of politics. An aggressive, philosophically informed attack on the myth of autonomous, objective science opens the student's intellectual map of reality, and lays the groundwork for a proposed (paradoxical) complementarity of the two traditional models: politics as a science and politics as a humanity. This uncomfortable, middle ground position, abandoning any global Rationalism, again makes historical and contemporary case studies a relevant—in fact essential—part of political education. This is an effective approach to introducing the nursing student, whose education is dominated by classical, rationalistic, scientific images, to political studies.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theor... more Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theory is the most successful theory in history. Quantum theory cannot be understood as a classical mechanical theory since it arose through the ‘interpolation’ of two highly successful but complementary classical mechanics: Newtonian particle mechanics and Maxwellian wave mechanics. The two-slit experiment illustrates that what is experienced depends on choice of experimental set-up. Quantum theory is properly understood within the more general framework of engineering thermodynamics. In Part One, I point to four essential characteristics of quantum theory that cannot be understood in any framework defined by the classical mechanical presuppositions of symmetry and conservation. These four characteristics are the participatory, the complementary, the indeterminate and the new non-commutative geometry. In Part Two, articulating engineering thermodynamics, I note there are two histories and tw...
Philosophy of Engineering, East and West, 2018
An engineering colleague and collaborator of Chen Changshu, who has been called the founder of co... more An engineering colleague and collaborator of Chen Changshu, who has been called the founder of contemporary Chinese philosophy of technology, Yuan Deyu recalls early efforts to develop philosophy of technology that took place at Harbin Institute of Technology in the 1960s. Case studies based in the idea of learning from workers and frameworks adapted from Japanese theory of technology scholarship constituted the original philosophy of technology in contemporary China. The importance of this work is largely unknown in the West and even among Chinese scholars born after the Cultural Revolution. Against this background, Yuan questions many of the ways Chinese philosophers have tried to adapt or relate to Western studies in philosophy and technology.
Philosophical Transactions A, 2023
Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theor... more Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum
theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theory
is the most successful theory in history. Quantum
theory cannot be understood as a classical mechanical
theory since it arose through the ‘interpolation’ of
two highly successful but complementary classical
mechanics: Newtonian particle mechanics and
Maxwellian wave mechanics. The two-slit experiment
illustrates that what is experienced depends on
choice of experimental set-up. Quantum theory
is properly understood within the more general
framework of engineering thermodynamics. In
Part One, I point to four essential characteristics
of quantum theory that cannot be understood in
any framework defined by the classical mechanical
presuppositions of symmetry and conservation.
These four characteristics are the participatory, the
complementary, the indeterminate and the new
non-commutative geometry. In Part Two, articulating
engineering thermodynamics, I note there are two
histories and two formulations of thermodynamics:
Carnot’s engineering thermodynamics and the
‘rational mechanical’ tradition of Clausius-Boltzmann.
These four essential characteristics of quantum
theory are also characteristics of engineering
thermodynamics. In Part Three, I trace the precursors
of Lazare Carnot’s engineering thermodynamics to
earlier insights of Huygens, d’Alembert, Leibniz andthe Bernoullis.
Leibniz brought these forth in his meta-paradigm shift from Statics to
Dynamics.
This article is part of the theme issue ’Thermodynamics 2.0: Bridging the natural and social sciences (Part 2)’.
Despite impressive contributions, the philosophical foundations of systems theory remain in flux.... more Despite impressive contributions, the philosophical foundations of systems theory remain in flux. In the practical context, the proper understanding of the relation of the systems framework to classical mechanics and quantum theory remains unresolved. I argue our understanding of systems theory is advanced by recognizing the crucial link to engineering and thermodynamics. Engineering thermodynamics is more general than the historically dominant ‘rational mechanical’ thermodynamics of Clausius, Boltzmann, the Entropy Cult (viz. Jaynes’s MEP) and the recent information theory. That systems theory’s philosophical foundations are in a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview should be no surprise, given the modern origins in cybernetics and operations research. The natural extension of systems to ecology, from Odum to Ulanowicz, support the thesis. More recently, Paul Romer’s New Growth Economics moved us from the old scientific economics to an inherently developmental eng...
The research reported here is concerned with understanding the components and composition of real... more The research reported here is concerned with understanding the components and composition of reality, according to the systems engineering worldview. To start, George Bugliarello argues that what engineers do, their progressive development of reality, is a natural extension of biological evolution. The implication is that biological evolution is, and always has been, an emergent, systems engineering enterprise. Reality, therefore, should be understandable (intelligible) both chronologically and ontologically as an emerging system of technological structures and functions. As I will point out, the Systems Engineering Worldview is not new. In Plato’s Timaeus reality is presented as the emerging product of the actions of the Architekton, the Master Craftsman, the global systems engineer. I develop this approach in several steps. In Step One, I briefly present the modern philosophy of systems engineering, as represented in the works of George Bugliarello, Walter Vincenti, Sam Florman an...
: In conclusion, chronic DMSO injections did not retard or accelerate the pathogenesis of autoimm... more : In conclusion, chronic DMSO injections did not retard or accelerate the pathogenesis of autoimmune-lymphoproliferative disease in three genetically distinct mouse models of systemic lupus. This result is consistent with observations described in our accompanying study, which showed no effect of DMSO injections on primary IgM or secondary IgM plus IgG antibody plague-forming cell responses after sheep erythrocyte immunization. Nor was any change in natural killer cell activity observed. It remains possible that other doses, routes, or regimens of DMSO treatment might influence disease pathogenesis.
Philosophy of Engineering, East and West, 2018
ABSTRACT The Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview The correct, self-referentia... more ABSTRACT The Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview The correct, self-referentially coherent Philosophy of Engineering is found through a reflection on the limits of Philosophy of Science and the Engineering Worldview is found through a reflection on the limits of the Scientific Worldview. The Philosophy of Engineering and Engineering Worldview are the more general frameworks subsuming the traditional Philosophy of Science and Scientific Worldview. Similarly Petroski has argued1 that actual inquiry is really a creative engineering activity. The inadequacies of the standard Logical Positivist Philosophy of Science were pointed out by Thomas Kuhn,2 Sir Karl Popper,3 Paul Feyerabend4 and Imre Lakatos5 – among others. Many of these difficulties stem from the failure to take into account the more fundamental context of the History and Philosophy of Engineering. American Pragmatist John Dewey6 differentiates the scientific and engineering frameworks by characterizing them correspondingly as the Spectator and the Participant representations of inquiry. In the Spectator representation inquiry is intent on discovering the objective nature of reality. Advances progressively converge to the final Theory of Everything7 – a complete and consistent correspondence with objective reality. In order for the inquiry to converge to reality, the nature of reality must remain constant. If the nature of reality were changing, perhaps randomly, convergence would be impossible. The Spectator representation tacitly assumes that the nature of reality, the order governing all the phenomena of the universe, must be invariant over time. The Spectator representation also entails that our activity as inquirers doesn’t alter the nature of reality. If our activity alters the nature of reality then the possibility of convergence is lost. The Participant representation of inquiry, which I identify with Engineering Philosophy, immediately accepts that the activity of inquiry causally alters the nature, structure and operation of reality precluding any ultimate convergence to a supposed time-invariant reality. Engineers naturally imagine they alter the course of events and progressively re-organize the way the universe works. The Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview are Participant representations and perspectives and so presuppose that the universe develops, and must have an emergent history. The proponents of the Scientific Worldview saw that their defining presuppositions entailed a Steady State Model of Reality.8 However, modern cosmology now accepts the Big Bang Model entailing a beginning and an emergence through a series of symmetry-breaking events9 – subsequent states unpredictable by their very nature, under-determined by the prior order. Whereas it is unclear whether the Spectator representation and the Scientific Research Program can ever make sense the Big Bang Model, the Engineering Worldview naturally expects evidence for a progressive, emergent history of the cosmos. Herbert Simon10 argues that engineering is problem solving and that problem solving is ‘attempting to move from a current state to a more desirable future state’. The ‘solution’ is never derivable, predictable or determined from any ‘real problem’ state. Real problem-states are opportunity-states enabling alternative futures. What is better (viz. actually more desirable) is not derivable from the prior state. Engineering presupposes that the engineer finds himself ‘enabled’ in a situation with potential alternative futures. The potential is embodied in the engineer and situation. I will argue that the evidence that Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview constitute the more general framework subsuming the traditional Philosophy of Science and the Scientific Worldview arose with ‘the new physics’ at the beginning of the 20th century. The failure of the interface of the highly successful Newtonian and Maxwellian Research Programs11 forced the embrace of complementarity – a post-scientific position in search of a new post-objectivist theory. Complementarity entails that the inquirer is encountering a universe that is not governed by one universal, objective order that uniquely determines subsequent states. Complementarity entails that the future is under-determined so that the emergence of the actual future involves a choice. That choice by its very nature can have no objective mechanical determinant or explanation. The choice is by its very nature scientifically ‘problematic’. Properly understood however – in the framework of the Philosophy of Engineering – the choice is the embodied ability of the agent-engineer to attempt to bring about a more desirable (viz better) future. What I refer to as Carnot’s Epiphany12 (viz. the Engineering Worldview) is that we are all engineers in a world of engineering. John Dewey13 referred to the evolutionary engineering process as ‘the construction of the good’. References 1.…
Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 2012
The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy ... more The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview. Engineering is not ‘merely’ applied science. Engineering knowledge requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework than scientific knowledge.
The engineering knowledge research program is part of the larger effort to articulate a philosoph... more The engineering knowledge research program is part of the larger effort to articulate a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview. Engineering knowledge requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework than scientific knowledge. Engineering is not 'merely' applied science. Kuhn and Popper established the limits of scientific knowledge. In parallel, the embrace of complementarity and uncertainty in the new physics undermined the scientific concept of observer-independent knowledge.
Politics and the Life Sciences
Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it ... more Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it only contaminates techno-scientific enterprises. However, the new, professional nurse is aware of the need for political understanding and political skills. The transformation of the socio-economic status of the health care industry from a social service to a business provides an excellent opportunity for introducing the nursing student to political thought in a positive conjunction with practical analysis. To generate a credible metapolitical framework, I embrace rather than avoid the current problems about the nature of the subject matter of politics. An aggressive, philosophically informed attack on the myth of autonomous, objective science opens the student's intellectual map of reality, and lays the groundwork for a proposed (paradoxical) complementarity of the two traditional models: politics as a science and politics as a humanity. This uncomfortable, middle ground position, a...
Philosophy of engineering and technology, 2018
The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy ... more The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview. Engineering is not ‘merely’ applied science. Engineering knowledge requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework than scientific knowledge.
Politics and the Life Sciences, Aug 1, 1986
Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it ... more Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it only contaminates techno-scientific enterprises. However, the new, professional nurse is aware of the need for political understanding and political skills. The transformation of the socio-economic status of the health care industry from a social service to a business provides an excellent opportunity for introducing the nursing student to political thought in a positive conjunction with practical analysis. To generate a credible metapolitical framework, I embrace rather than avoid the current problems about the nature of the subject matter of politics. An aggressive, philosophically informed attack on the myth of autonomous, objective science opens the student's intellectual map of reality, and lays the groundwork for a proposed (paradoxical) complementarity of the two traditional models: politics as a science and politics as a humanity. This uncomfortable, middle ground position, abandoning any global Rationalism, again makes historical and contemporary case studies a relevant—in fact essential—part of political education. This is an effective approach to introducing the nursing student, whose education is dominated by classical, rationalistic, scientific images, to political studies.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theor... more Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theory is the most successful theory in history. Quantum theory cannot be understood as a classical mechanical theory since it arose through the ‘interpolation’ of two highly successful but complementary classical mechanics: Newtonian particle mechanics and Maxwellian wave mechanics. The two-slit experiment illustrates that what is experienced depends on choice of experimental set-up. Quantum theory is properly understood within the more general framework of engineering thermodynamics. In Part One, I point to four essential characteristics of quantum theory that cannot be understood in any framework defined by the classical mechanical presuppositions of symmetry and conservation. These four characteristics are the participatory, the complementary, the indeterminate and the new non-commutative geometry. In Part Two, articulating engineering thermodynamics, I note there are two histories and tw...
Philosophy of Engineering, East and West, 2018
An engineering colleague and collaborator of Chen Changshu, who has been called the founder of co... more An engineering colleague and collaborator of Chen Changshu, who has been called the founder of contemporary Chinese philosophy of technology, Yuan Deyu recalls early efforts to develop philosophy of technology that took place at Harbin Institute of Technology in the 1960s. Case studies based in the idea of learning from workers and frameworks adapted from Japanese theory of technology scholarship constituted the original philosophy of technology in contemporary China. The importance of this work is largely unknown in the West and even among Chinese scholars born after the Cultural Revolution. Against this background, Yuan questions many of the ways Chinese philosophers have tried to adapt or relate to Western studies in philosophy and technology.
Philosophical Transactions A, 2023
Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theor... more Feynman insisted ‘no one understands quantum
theory’. Yet, experimentalists tell us quantum theory
is the most successful theory in history. Quantum
theory cannot be understood as a classical mechanical
theory since it arose through the ‘interpolation’ of
two highly successful but complementary classical
mechanics: Newtonian particle mechanics and
Maxwellian wave mechanics. The two-slit experiment
illustrates that what is experienced depends on
choice of experimental set-up. Quantum theory
is properly understood within the more general
framework of engineering thermodynamics. In
Part One, I point to four essential characteristics
of quantum theory that cannot be understood in
any framework defined by the classical mechanical
presuppositions of symmetry and conservation.
These four characteristics are the participatory, the
complementary, the indeterminate and the new
non-commutative geometry. In Part Two, articulating
engineering thermodynamics, I note there are two
histories and two formulations of thermodynamics:
Carnot’s engineering thermodynamics and the
‘rational mechanical’ tradition of Clausius-Boltzmann.
These four essential characteristics of quantum
theory are also characteristics of engineering
thermodynamics. In Part Three, I trace the precursors
of Lazare Carnot’s engineering thermodynamics to
earlier insights of Huygens, d’Alembert, Leibniz andthe Bernoullis.
Leibniz brought these forth in his meta-paradigm shift from Statics to
Dynamics.
This article is part of the theme issue ’Thermodynamics 2.0: Bridging the natural and social sciences (Part 2)’.
Despite impressive contributions, the philosophical foundations of systems theory remain in flux.... more Despite impressive contributions, the philosophical foundations of systems theory remain in flux. In the practical context, the proper understanding of the relation of the systems framework to classical mechanics and quantum theory remains unresolved. I argue our understanding of systems theory is advanced by recognizing the crucial link to engineering and thermodynamics. Engineering thermodynamics is more general than the historically dominant ‘rational mechanical’ thermodynamics of Clausius, Boltzmann, the Entropy Cult (viz. Jaynes’s MEP) and the recent information theory. That systems theory’s philosophical foundations are in a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview should be no surprise, given the modern origins in cybernetics and operations research. The natural extension of systems to ecology, from Odum to Ulanowicz, support the thesis. More recently, Paul Romer’s New Growth Economics moved us from the old scientific economics to an inherently developmental eng...
The research reported here is concerned with understanding the components and composition of real... more The research reported here is concerned with understanding the components and composition of reality, according to the systems engineering worldview. To start, George Bugliarello argues that what engineers do, their progressive development of reality, is a natural extension of biological evolution. The implication is that biological evolution is, and always has been, an emergent, systems engineering enterprise. Reality, therefore, should be understandable (intelligible) both chronologically and ontologically as an emerging system of technological structures and functions. As I will point out, the Systems Engineering Worldview is not new. In Plato’s Timaeus reality is presented as the emerging product of the actions of the Architekton, the Master Craftsman, the global systems engineer. I develop this approach in several steps. In Step One, I briefly present the modern philosophy of systems engineering, as represented in the works of George Bugliarello, Walter Vincenti, Sam Florman an...
: In conclusion, chronic DMSO injections did not retard or accelerate the pathogenesis of autoimm... more : In conclusion, chronic DMSO injections did not retard or accelerate the pathogenesis of autoimmune-lymphoproliferative disease in three genetically distinct mouse models of systemic lupus. This result is consistent with observations described in our accompanying study, which showed no effect of DMSO injections on primary IgM or secondary IgM plus IgG antibody plague-forming cell responses after sheep erythrocyte immunization. Nor was any change in natural killer cell activity observed. It remains possible that other doses, routes, or regimens of DMSO treatment might influence disease pathogenesis.
Philosophy of Engineering, East and West, 2018
ABSTRACT The Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview The correct, self-referentia... more ABSTRACT The Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview The correct, self-referentially coherent Philosophy of Engineering is found through a reflection on the limits of Philosophy of Science and the Engineering Worldview is found through a reflection on the limits of the Scientific Worldview. The Philosophy of Engineering and Engineering Worldview are the more general frameworks subsuming the traditional Philosophy of Science and Scientific Worldview. Similarly Petroski has argued1 that actual inquiry is really a creative engineering activity. The inadequacies of the standard Logical Positivist Philosophy of Science were pointed out by Thomas Kuhn,2 Sir Karl Popper,3 Paul Feyerabend4 and Imre Lakatos5 – among others. Many of these difficulties stem from the failure to take into account the more fundamental context of the History and Philosophy of Engineering. American Pragmatist John Dewey6 differentiates the scientific and engineering frameworks by characterizing them correspondingly as the Spectator and the Participant representations of inquiry. In the Spectator representation inquiry is intent on discovering the objective nature of reality. Advances progressively converge to the final Theory of Everything7 – a complete and consistent correspondence with objective reality. In order for the inquiry to converge to reality, the nature of reality must remain constant. If the nature of reality were changing, perhaps randomly, convergence would be impossible. The Spectator representation tacitly assumes that the nature of reality, the order governing all the phenomena of the universe, must be invariant over time. The Spectator representation also entails that our activity as inquirers doesn’t alter the nature of reality. If our activity alters the nature of reality then the possibility of convergence is lost. The Participant representation of inquiry, which I identify with Engineering Philosophy, immediately accepts that the activity of inquiry causally alters the nature, structure and operation of reality precluding any ultimate convergence to a supposed time-invariant reality. Engineers naturally imagine they alter the course of events and progressively re-organize the way the universe works. The Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview are Participant representations and perspectives and so presuppose that the universe develops, and must have an emergent history. The proponents of the Scientific Worldview saw that their defining presuppositions entailed a Steady State Model of Reality.8 However, modern cosmology now accepts the Big Bang Model entailing a beginning and an emergence through a series of symmetry-breaking events9 – subsequent states unpredictable by their very nature, under-determined by the prior order. Whereas it is unclear whether the Spectator representation and the Scientific Research Program can ever make sense the Big Bang Model, the Engineering Worldview naturally expects evidence for a progressive, emergent history of the cosmos. Herbert Simon10 argues that engineering is problem solving and that problem solving is ‘attempting to move from a current state to a more desirable future state’. The ‘solution’ is never derivable, predictable or determined from any ‘real problem’ state. Real problem-states are opportunity-states enabling alternative futures. What is better (viz. actually more desirable) is not derivable from the prior state. Engineering presupposes that the engineer finds himself ‘enabled’ in a situation with potential alternative futures. The potential is embodied in the engineer and situation. I will argue that the evidence that Philosophy of Engineering and the Engineering Worldview constitute the more general framework subsuming the traditional Philosophy of Science and the Scientific Worldview arose with ‘the new physics’ at the beginning of the 20th century. The failure of the interface of the highly successful Newtonian and Maxwellian Research Programs11 forced the embrace of complementarity – a post-scientific position in search of a new post-objectivist theory. Complementarity entails that the inquirer is encountering a universe that is not governed by one universal, objective order that uniquely determines subsequent states. Complementarity entails that the future is under-determined so that the emergence of the actual future involves a choice. That choice by its very nature can have no objective mechanical determinant or explanation. The choice is by its very nature scientifically ‘problematic’. Properly understood however – in the framework of the Philosophy of Engineering – the choice is the embodied ability of the agent-engineer to attempt to bring about a more desirable (viz better) future. What I refer to as Carnot’s Epiphany12 (viz. the Engineering Worldview) is that we are all engineers in a world of engineering. John Dewey13 referred to the evolutionary engineering process as ‘the construction of the good’. References 1.…
Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 2012
The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy ... more The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview. Engineering is not ‘merely’ applied science. Engineering knowledge requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework than scientific knowledge.
The engineering knowledge research program is part of the larger effort to articulate a philosoph... more The engineering knowledge research program is part of the larger effort to articulate a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview. Engineering knowledge requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework than scientific knowledge. Engineering is not 'merely' applied science. Kuhn and Popper established the limits of scientific knowledge. In parallel, the embrace of complementarity and uncertainty in the new physics undermined the scientific concept of observer-independent knowledge.
Politics and the Life Sciences
Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it ... more Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it only contaminates techno-scientific enterprises. However, the new, professional nurse is aware of the need for political understanding and political skills. The transformation of the socio-economic status of the health care industry from a social service to a business provides an excellent opportunity for introducing the nursing student to political thought in a positive conjunction with practical analysis. To generate a credible metapolitical framework, I embrace rather than avoid the current problems about the nature of the subject matter of politics. An aggressive, philosophically informed attack on the myth of autonomous, objective science opens the student's intellectual map of reality, and lays the groundwork for a proposed (paradoxical) complementarity of the two traditional models: politics as a science and politics as a humanity. This uncomfortable, middle ground position, a...