Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Essay

Ferguson's Argument and Evidence

In Eugene Ferguson Engineering and the Mind's Eye, he makes the case that the existing privileging of science and math over the nonverbal and visual in engineering education is mutually a dangerous practice and a historical abnormality. By applying a well-demonstrated chronicle of engineering strategy, Ferguson claims that not all engineering complications can be resolved by analysis in mathematical; short of the ability to envisage machines, environment, and the structures. He goes on to explain the fact that engineers, a lot of the time, make poor judgment calls. These weak calls lead to crushing disappointments in nuclear power plants, bridges, refrigerators, and other machinery. The book holds a generous variety of old drawings and sketches and presents well-chosen themes, as well as a foretaste into the history of engineering, from its earlier stages to its status, scattered with the essential part played by the mind's eye. Ferguson highlights the exclusive nature of engineering design, specifically that it is not a science, nevertheless instead of art that produces many helpful items. Ferguson stressed that the ancients, regardless of having neither computers nor calculus, often carried out extraordinary complexity in their designs. We, with our display of current logical tools, quite often attain remarkable foolishness in ours.

Ferguson made the point that design as "invention instigates things to come into being from thoughts, makes the world follow to view; while science, by springing ideas from watching, makes the statement "form follows function" false. He also argued that design has two main principal purposes. One of those purposes is to show the designers how the concepts look on paper. Ferguson debates that they display to the workers was important because it was visual. He believed that the designs were are all founded on reasonable judgments.

Furthermore, Ferguson concludes that this has always been and will always be the case that the privileging of science and math over the nonverbal and visual in engineering education would become more and more. The design aspect of engineering, however, receives less recognition than does its scientific nature. The design is a process that necessarily is infested with uncertainties because one can never fully predict its outcomes. However, the path taken by the design process is predictable even though modern tools like computer-aided design programs are used. This is the way Ferguson thought.

Ferguson's stresses on the visual. He believes that it is linked to a greater worry with engineering's loss of that holistic, experiential real-world experience on which the field was initially founded. Therefore, his history of engineering highlights its subjective character before the clear focus. He also uses history to make his point. Ferguson talks about how engineers in the Renaissance, applied drawing techniques that were effective. Again, this showed how the visual was important. He also used drawing methods to visualize and therefore think through Scientific Revolution breakthroughs such as human anatomy and planetary motion. Also, other things like perspective drawing procedures (developed by Renaissance statisticians) facilitated project by making representations more exact. During the 18th and 19th centuries, drawing techniques that were formalized like the application of models, and the creation of visual systems for engineering computation -- descriptive statistics, nomography, slide rules, and indicator diagrams -- reserved visual thinking at the lead of engineering practice and design.

When WWII ended, engineering education moved away from what was an open-ended art and in the direction of sound, natural science. Suddenly shop courses were swapped with theories of mechanics, heat transfer, thermodynamics; students have slight collaboration with the real world; those that are graduating engineers have a tough time designing answers for real-world difficulties.

Eugene Ferguson proves that engineering that is good is as much a subject of nonverbal thinking and intuition as of computation and equations. He contends that a structure of engineering education that disregards nonverbal thinking will create engineers who are seriously ignorant of the many behaviors in which the real world fluctuates from the exact replicas constructed in the minds of those in the academic.

Eugene Ferguson also looks at the course of engineering design. Ferguson, who has been successively a professional museum curator, a mechanical engineer, and an instructor of the history of technology, utilizes instances fluctuating from the progress of the American ax to the downfall of the Hartford Coliseum. Also, the functioning of the Hubble space telescope to show the customs where visual thinking enhances engineering and the traditions in which engineering that depends on exclusively on technical cleverness can go amiss. Ferguson finishes his account by debating that engineering instruction since 1945 has been distorted in the direction of analytical methods. By the way, are recognized as being the simplest to appraise and teach as mentioned earlier in the essay.

All over, Ferguson's core argument is that the personal, connection to real-world problems through representation and visual thinking, is extremely significant to engineers' capability to design solutions that are effective. Also, that engineering's systematic turn to theoretical objectivity has had terrible effects on the utility and safety of engineering projects. Even though his stress is more on the visual side, it naturally leads Ferguson to abandon larger systems of power in some of his illustrations. I suppose that what he's getting at is nurturing creativity instead of the visual as such. His argument for creative and subjectivity, real-world thinking in engineering inevitably sound incredibly logical to me.

Part II: Assess and Explore the Applicability of Ferguson's ideas to other Engineering Realms.

Corporations are turning out to be more and more analytical of new graduate engineers. The criticism is not that the new graduates are not smart students. It is not even that their scientific training is not satisfactory; but that these graduates are not aware how to use this exercise. They lack the wisdom when it comes down to them applying it to real engineering complications. Eugene Ferguson in the Mind's Eye agrees on Engineering. He believes that university programs are not getting what they need. He stresses that they are missing the real core of engineering. Programs highlight the technical features of the discipline -- analysis, analysis, computer simulation, and mathematical description. However, ignore a myriad of other characteristics that are vital for effective engineering projects.

Ferguson argued that elite engineering schools are more and more turning out students more acquainted with arithmetic than machinery: graduates, mentioned to me a decade ago, we can't, make anything that anyone needs anymore.' Ferguson goes on to mention that this is about as harsh as you can be in talking about an engineer."

Ferguson would agree with R. A. Buchanan article, The Diaspora of British Engineering, who explores how engineering was at the top of its game during the imperialism era. The fact that the separation of British engineering in the era before 1830 was merely comparative should serve to prompt us that there were allowances, and some of these were imperative to be worth citing…