Comments (0)

By deg, October 31, 2009 4:50 am

Yesterday, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) National Convention in Kansas City hosted a panel session on Philosophy & Civil Engineering. The session was organized by fPET-2010 steering committee member Jon A. Schmidt and featured noted structural engineer Erik Nelson and fPET co-chair David E. Goldberg.  More information about the panel is available here and here.

Comments (0)

By deg, October 28, 2009 1:48 pm

The Forum on Philosophy, Engineering & Technology (fPET-2010) is pleased to welcome Dr. Rachelle Hollander, Director of the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society (CEES) to the steering committee.  A portion of her biography is excerpted below:

Rachelle Hollander directs the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society (CEES) at the National Academy of Engineering.  She is also a senior research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park.  In 2006, Dr. Hollander received the Olmsted Award “for innovative contributions to the liberal arts within engineering education” from the American Society of Engineering Education’s Liberal Education Division.  On retiring from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2006, she also received special acknowledgment for her professional contributions at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) Annual Meeting, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting.  Dr. Hollander is a Fellow of the AAAS and currently a member of the Electorate Nominating Committee of the Section on History and Philosophy of Science.

More information is available here.

Comments (2)

By deg, October 21, 2009 7:53 am

The 2010 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering & Technology (fPET-2010) has issued its second call for papers (pdf here).  fPET-2010 will be held 9-10 May 2010 (Sunday evening – Monday) at the Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Co.  Organized by the Committee on Philosophy, Engineering & Technology, the event is held in cooperation with a number of organizations:

• the Society for Philosophy and Technology (www.spt.org)
• the IEEE Society for the Social Implications of Technology (www.ieeessit.org)
• the Liberal Education Division (here) & Technology Literacy Constituent Committee (here) of the ASEE
• the International Network for Engineering Studies (www.inesweb.org)
• the Engineering Philosophy Committee of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of ASCE (www.seinstitute.org)

Abstracts (500-750 words) are due electronically (here) 28 December 2009 (Monday) and notification of acceptances will be sent 1 March 2010.  All papers will be blind reviewed in one of three tracks (1) philosophy (reviewed by philosophers), (2) engineering ethics and other disciplinary subjects (mixed reviewing), and (3) reflections of practitioners (reviewed by engineers).

The forum builds on the success of the two previous Workshops on Philosophy & Engineering (WPE-2007 & WPE-2008) and examples of previous submissions may be found in the abstracts booklets from those events (2007 here and 2008 here).

More information is available about fPET-2010 from forum co-chairs Diane P. Michelfelder (michelfelder@macalester.edu) and David E. Goldberg (deg@illinois.edu).

Comments (0)

By deg, October 9, 2009 5:34 pm

A good way for engineers to get their philosophical feet wet is to watch or listen to Teaching Company courses (here).  Most of the courses are worth the time and effort, but two come to mind immediately:

1. Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition (here)
2. Philosophy of Science (here)

Two courses that aren’t strictly philosophy that engineers should find useful are

• Argumentation (here)
• Thinking about Capitalism (here)

One secret with the Teaching Company is to wait until their courses are on sale.  Great Minds and PhilSci aren’t on sale right now, but Argumentation and Capitalism are.  These courses are a great way to make your time in front of a treadmill or on your morning drive or commute that much more productive.

Comments (0)

By deg, October 9, 2009 12:54 pm

Kenneth R. Foster of the University of Pennsylvania and Richard Evans of Cornell University have joined the fPET-2010 steering committee.  Foster, co-author of Judging Science, joins the committee as the representative of IEEE’s Society on the Social Implications of Technology and Evans, Director, Engineering Communications at Cornell, joins the committee as the representative of ASEE’s Liberal Education Division.

Comments (0)

By deg, October 8, 2009 6:24 pm

Zachary Pirtle has passed along information about a meeting called “Engineering towards a More Just and Sustainable World” to be held as an Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Mini-Conference on March 6-7, 2010 in Cincinnati, Ohio:

Engineers and engineering shape our social, physical, and built environments in profound ways.  As that influence grows, deliberation and debate about underlying choices and directions becomes ever more important.  To aid these critical reflections, the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) is hosting this mini-conference in conjunction with its 2010 annual meeting at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza Hotel.  Cosponsored by the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society of the National Academy of Engineering, the meeting will bring together engineers and scholars in ethics and in science and technology studies to explore the connections between engineering and justice.

The kickoff keynote lecture will be free to all attendees of the APPE Annual Meeting, but registration is required to attend subsequent sessions. Registration costs $70, or $40 for those already registered for the APPE meeting. Registration is available here.  A preliminary agenda for the mini-conference is available here.  For more information, contact Rachelle Hollander at rhollander@nae.edu.