Are ethical discoverers and inventors born, or can we create them? How can we improve public understanding of the processes by which we have transformed the world? This chapter will discuss these issues, using the detailed case-studies in previous chapters as examples and the cognitive analysis as a framework.
I have adapted three broad categories of learning from Mortimer Adler (1982). The first two are also emphasized by Gilbert Ryle.
1) Information: (What)
Often, the kind of factual knowledge a scientist or inventor possesses gives her or him an advantage over others. Kepler had to know what the latest data were on the orbits of Mars. Bell knew more about acoustics and the structure of the ear than other inventors. Jack Kilby deliberately read widely, scanning dozens of magazines and patent applications far removed from problems he was working on at the time. This strategy gave him a unique knowledge base. When asked to find a way to print carbon resistors on a ceramic base, he remembered an article on tiny sandblasters he had read in a dental journal .
2) Skills: (How)
But information alone is not sufficient. Kepler had to know how to solve mathematical problems. Krebs had his ‘secret weapon’--from Otto Warburg, he had learned how to slice tissue. Bell hired Watson to provide the skill necessary to build the first telephone.
Other skills include writing, mathematical techniques--and even the set of skills involved in lifelong learning.
Gilbert Ryle emphasizes the distinction between knowing that and knowing how. About experts, he says, "we are interested less in the stocks of truths that they acquire and retain than in their capacities to find out truths for themselves and their abilities to organize and exploit them, when discovered" .
3) Wisdom: (When and Why)
Novices and experts can often share the same pieces of information, but only the expert represents this information in a way that shows when it can be applied to a particular problem. "The expert sees the situation, and sees what to do" . Part of this representation is a way of classifying problems that also suggests what heuristics or algorithms will solve them. This kind of wisdom is often referred to as judgment.
On unfamiliar problems, this kind of judgment is especially important, and experts frequently make it by referring to other cases that are similar in certain ways. One of the classic heuristics for making this kind of comparison is ‘follow the analogy of nature’. Confronted with the problem of transmitting speech electrically, Bell ‘followed the analogy of nature’ and used the human ear as his mental model. He had to have knowledge of the ear , the skill to build a device like one and the wisdom to see the potential connection to the speaking telegraph. Similarly, The Natural Step and the McDonough/Braungart design protocols are based on an analogy to nature. Again, this analogy is productive because the authors of these frameworks are able to use Nature’s cycle to generate mental models that suggest promising directions for environmental design.
There is another aspect of wisdom that relates to "when". It is the willingness to ask "why". Frankentstein should have asked this question before creating a human being. Cloning researchers are asking this question now. Before and during the process of creation, there needs to be reflection on the consequences. Will this design or discovery make the world a better place? As Norbert Wiener said, "Our papers have been making a great deal of American ‘know-how’ ever since we had the misfortune to discover the atomic bomb. There is one quality more important than know-how and we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount of it. This is the ‘know-what’ by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be" . Wiener’s ‘know-what’ clearly means ‘know what to do’, which I refer to as ‘why’.
Moral imagination is an important part of this kind of reflection. In order to think about long-term consequences of technological innovation, one has to be able to see one’s current paradigm as a view, and seriously consider alternatives. How would the world be transformed if all products followed Nature’s cycle and there were no waste?
I teach mostly engineering students. Standard education in science and engineering is oriented towards categories one and two. Students learn a mountain of facts, procedures for testing and refining, and algorithms for solving problems. Only rarely are they ever prompted to consider why.
For engineering students, the courses I teach come in the category of ‘other’ -- ‘stuff’ that isn’t engineering. My biggest problem is to convince them that this material is the essence of engineering. I belong to a Division within the engineering school--Technology, Culture & Communications--that has the mission of teaching engineering students communication skills and the sort of wisdom that will make them into virtuous practitioners. Humanities and social sciences courses that teach knowledge of these disciplines and their methods are extremely valuable for any student, but students often compartmentalize this knowledge and see it as irrelevant to engineering practice.
My goal is to produce students who will be:
The focus of this book has mostly been on (1). It is the essential first step in making (2) and (3) possible. Creating a better world begins with understanding the kind of thinking and imagining that could produce it.
This page was last edited: Wednesday, July 14, 1999