Research and the working methods of engineers
as described in the Telegraph letters column.
A brief treatise on the psychopathology of
everyday misperceptions of research.

[was: Role of engineers]


Dear Colleagues,

Allan Reese published a joke yesterday (below) from the letters
column of the Telegraph.

I am not sure that it illuminates how engineers think, but it does
shed light on two of the serious issues involved in design research.

The first issue is theoretical.

The engineer in this story found a swift and apparently pragmatic
solution to the problem, "How high is [the campus clock tower] Joe?"

The difficulty I see in the solution is that the engineer did not
find out how high Joe is. The engineer learned what the caretaker
believes the height of Joe to be.

Both the physicist and the mathematician have a reasoning process
that enables them to learn how high Joe is. Each of their answers is
likely to be correct, at least within some degree of approximation.
The engineer, whose answer is based on what the caretaker told him,
has no way to know how reasonable the answer may be.

If the caretaker is an enthusiast for university history who reads
the blueprints of university builds, his answer may be somewhat more
accurate than either that of the physicist or the mathematician. If
the caretaker is prone to pass on local folklore as fact, the answer
may be far less accurate. If the caretaker has listened to a garbled
jumble of information, confusing facts, stories, and the buildings he
has heard them about, the answer will be less accurate still. If the
caretaker hates engineered and engineering consultants, he may even
have deliberately lied. The engineer in this story has no way to know
which is the case.

Thus, we arrive at exactly the cultural conflict that Karl Taylor
Compton discussed in his inaugural address as president of MIT. In
those years, MIT was in transition from the engineering school it
once was to the early stages of university it has become. Compton
stressed the fundamental sciences as the foundation of a robust
approach to engineering, and he emphasized the fundamental sciences
as a way to ensure that we understand better and know more accurately
what we are dealing with when we engineer. Compton (1930) called for
a close examination of all courses "to see where training in details
has been unduly emphasized at the expense of the more powerful
training in all-embracing fundamental principles."

The physicist and the mathematician worked out their answer based on
fundamental principles. Within a reasonable degree of error,
therefore, they are each likely to be right.

The engineer relied on a pragmatic rule of thumb solution. The
problem is that he had no way to know whether this rule of thumb
could usefully be applied to this specific instance, and he had no
idea at all of his possible degree of error.

The second issue involves the specific project that the engineer
undertook. According to the story, "A mathematician, a physicist and
an engineer as part of a project were each given a ball of string, a
lead weight and a watch and told to work out the height of 'Joe', the
large campus clock tower named after Joseph Chamberlain."

The implicit contract is that each will "work out" the answer in some
reasonable way. The engineer did not work out the answer. He slacked
off and accepted the first bit of information that came his way.

Three problems arise in this approach to the project.

The first problem is that it is a clear breach of contract. The
engineer did not do what he undertook to do. This is a violation of
professional ethics.

The second problem is related to the theoretical challenge I stated
earlier. The engineer relied on second-hand information without
ensuring that the information was reliable. Munch-Pedersen (1996:
240-242) discusses this in terms of skeptical inquiry and information
responsibility. Patrick Wilson (1983: 123-163) addresses another
facet of the same problem in a discussion of acquiring and using
information in everyday life applies directly to these kinds of
projects.

The third problem involves the problem of appropriate and
inappropriate uses of intuition in research. The engineer's approach
was intuitive and inspired, but it was invalid in this instance.
Intuition is a fundamental research tool in every field of human
endeavor. This issue is central to such classics on research as
Hadamard's (1996 [1945]) The Mathematician's Mind. It is also an
important aspect of the rich literature of heuristics. Polya (1990
[1945]) sheds light on intuition as do many authors in Groner,
Groner, and Bischof (1983).

This reflects back to a moment in the thread on generative ideas. The
issue of intuition in design research came up in a note that
questioned the failure of many involved in design research to pay
enough attention to intuition. Intuition itself is rarely the
problem. The problem arises when people confuse intuition with
demonstration or proof. Intuition is an early and ongoing part of
every robust research project. Intuition generates ideas, problem
statements, hypothesis, solution possibilities, and solution
statements. Intuition suggests working methods, research methods, and
approaches to solutions. Intuition never offers a complete answer.
Even when intuition is correct, research requires more. Research
requires that we check the answer. Research requires that we learn
whether what we intuit is so. We must find out whether the answer we
develop by intuitive means is correct in the case of questions such
as the height of Joe. We must learn whether an intuition is
reasonable or useful in the case of other kinds of research problems.

The inappropriate use of intuition in this case clarifies that issue
nicely. The problem is not that the engineer has an inspired
intuition. Asking the caretaker was inspired. The problem is that the
engineer stopped with the first answer he got and he did not check
this answer under the terms of the agreement requiring him to "work
out the height." Instead, he gave away the watch and went off to the
pub.

Good intuition arises from immersion in the problem. The literature
of science is filled with tales of great intuitions: Archimedes's
discovery of specific gravity, Einstein's development of relativity
or his inspired use of Brownian motion to demonstrate the existence
of atoms, the development of Kepler's Laws, or the famous dream that
helped Kekule to solve the problem of the benzene ring.

At the same time, we need more than intuition. In ach of these cases,
scientists tested, checked, and attempted to verify data or falsify a
theory. Hadamard (1996: 56-57) notes that "the feeling of absolute
certitude which accompanies the inspiration generally corresponds to
reality," at least, it must be added, for those who are immersed in
the subject matter. He continues, "but it may happen that it
[intuition] has deceived us. Whether such has been the case or not
must be ascertained by our properly so-called reason, as task which
belongs to our conscious self."

He also notes that intuition leads us in the right direction without
providing all that we need to get there. This specifically happens
because direction may be right, while significant details remain
wrong.

Our engineer overlooked all these problems in relying on an
intuitive, rule-of-thumb solution to the project.

I understand that Allan intended this joke as a light moment in the
thread. As Freud famously noted, however, jokes say a great deal
about what is on our minds. I thought it worth examining this joke
more deeply for what it might contribute to the thread, and for what
it reveals about continuing challenges and debates in design research.

Best regards,

Ken


References

Compton, Karl Taylor. 1930. Presidential Inaugural Address. Quoted in
Herbert Simon. 1982. The sciences of the artificial., 2nd ed.: 131.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.


Groner, Rudolf, Marina Groner, and Walter Bischof, editors. 1983.
Methods of Heuristics. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.

Hadamard, Jacques. 1996 [1945], The Mathematician's Mind. The
Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. With a new preface
by P. N. Johnson-Laird. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press.

Munch-Pedersen, Erland. 1996. "Patrick Wilson and the Classics."
Nordic Conference on Information Authority and User Knowledge,
University of Borås, Sweden, April 1993. Reproduced in Information
Science:  From the Development of the Discipline to Social
Interaction. Johan Olaisen, Erland Munch-Pedersen and Patrick Wilson,
editors. Oslo, 1996: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 233-243.

Polya, G. 1990 [1945]. How to Solve It. A New Aspect of Mathematical
Method. London: Penguin Books.

Wilson, Patrick. 1983. Second-Hand Knowledge. An Inquiry into
Cognitive Authority.


Allan Reese wrote:

-snip-

The continuing debate suggests that list members may be interested
in the following old chestnut that appeared again in the letters column of
the Daily Telegraph this week.

Daily Telegraph Letters

Date: 11 February 2003

SIR -

Steve Devine's elegant solution to the weighing problem (letter, Feb.
10) reminded me of my (very short) time at Birmingham University.

A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer as part of a project
were each given a ball of string, a lead weight and a watch and told
to work out the height of "Joe", the large campus clock tower named
after Joseph Chamberlain.

The physicist, knowing that the acceleration due to gravity is
32ft/sec/sec, dropped the weight from the top of the tower several
times, timed its fall with the watch, and thus was able to calculate
the height.

The mathematician, however, not relishing the prospect of many trips
up the tower to drop the weight, created a simple pendulum using the
string tied to the top of Joe and the weight at the other end by the
ground, and knowing that the periodic swing is a function of its
length and gravity, was able, using the watch, to calculate the
height having made only one trip up the tower.

The engineer, relishing no exercise at all, simply went to the
caretaker, gave him the watch, and asked him how high Joe was, then
retired to the Students Union for a pint.

From:

David Lowe BSc (Engineering - Failed), Malvern, Worcs

-snip-


--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University