Inquiry in Engineering, Design in Science: Completing the Matrix

Part of a diagram of contrasting information flows in scientific inquiry and engineering design

Supporting-role arrows
in white

Adapted from
“The Antiparallel Structures
of Science and Engineering”

The focus of science is inquiry, and the focus of engineering is design. Just as sensory and motor neurons run antiparallel through the structure of the body, so inquiry and design run antiparallel through the structure of knowledge. Eye and hand, perception and action, measuring and making, science seeking knowledge, engineering seeking function.

I’ve been exploring a conceptual framework that helps make sense of this dual relationship between science and engineering, and I’m writing to describe an aspect that I think adds clarity. I’ve already written about several others: at the deepest level, antiparallel flows of information; at the level of practice, alternating layers of purpose; and a few days ago, to illustrate one contrast among many, opposite views of potential causation.

Last Wednesday, while distracting myself from buzzing machinery and gloved hands in my mouth, I began thinking about a 2 × 2 table with an essence that distills down to this:

	Role of inquiry	Role of design
In science:	increase knowledge	support inquiry
In engineering:	support design	increase function

The roles of inquiry in science and design in engineering are self-explanatory, but the roles of design in science and inquiry in engineering deserve some attention.

Inquiry in support of design

Inquiry supports design by exploring useful, predictable phenomena — sometimes discovering them, sometimes exploring their practical properties. Inquiry may serve science and design equally, as it often does in the study of molecules and materials.

Consider metallic glasses: The early examples (starting with a gold-silicon alloy cooled at 10⁶ °C/sec) were of great interest and no use. A search for more practical materials followed — e.g. lower cost, slower cooling (down to 1 °C/sec), or useful in low-loss power distribution transformers). Research spanned a range from studies directed mostly by scientific curiosity to others directed by the pure pursuit of applicable knowledge.

The aims of science direct inquiry toward the horizons of knowledge, seeking complete, precise understanding of unknowns, from quarks to the cosmos. In engineering, one basic aim turns inquiry toward the center of practice, working to develop models good enough to make design predictions match product performance, and to help designers make that performance better.

Design in support of inquiry

In scientific inquiry, the characteristic aim of design is sensitivity — for example, to design an instrument that will respond to the impact of photons from an infant galaxy at redshift z = 7.

In engineering design, the characteristic aim is insensitivity — for example, to design a nuclear reactor containment vessel that will respond as little as possible to the impact of a 100-ton aircraft diving at a speed near Mach 1.

In designing experiments, scientists seek surprising results: a physicist might plan to probe a doped metal-oxide junction to study a highly-correlated 2D electron gas near a quantum critical point, seeking novel phenomena.

In designing products, engineers seek predictable results: a vacuum-systems engineer might plan to use a stainless steel pressure vessel with a 2 × safety margin, seeking and achieving surprise-free performance.

At the boundary…

Where study and modeling make a phenomenon predictable, its interest as a target of inquiry ends, and its utility as an element of design begins.

This is one reason why confusing science with engineering is a path to failure in research and development — why a deeper understanding of how they mesh is a path to opportunity.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Neo June 7, 2010 at 4:50 pm UTC: Thanks, Eric. This is truly kind of eye of opening. I look forward to still deeper discussions. And if you can make it like experts from different domains- Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics each expressing their points of view, that would still be wonderful.

Neo

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