The Engineering Method

Explore the ingenuity of engineering in Bill Hammack's book, The Things We Make.

In my interview with Bill Hammack, the engineerguy on YouTube and author of “The Things We Make: the Unknown History of Invention,” I asked him if he felt that people misunderstood engineering, and he wrote his book to change that perception “Yes,” he replied. He said that a common misunderstanding is to think of engineering as “applied science” — with science being the theory and engineering being the practice. Hammack helps us understand what the engineering method is, and how it is distinct from the scientific method.

In his book, Hammack details how various things have been built or invented using this engineering method, some of them long before science and mathematics were fields of study. “At its simplest, the engineering method is using rules of thumb to solve problems for which there is incomplete information,” he writes. In other words, engineers attempt to create the best possible solution to a problem, even though there is a lot of uncertainty in doing so.

To be clear, trained engineers, especially today, use science and mathematics in solving a problem. Yet his insight is that engineering and its pragmatic method for problem solving has its own place and its own purpose, even as the fields of science and mathematics continue to expand. Engineering will always be at the edge of that understanding.

Hammack talks about rules of thumb, or heuristics, as a way of learning to do something and which might be passed down to an apprentice or shared by members of a guild. He examines how medieval masons knew how to build arches for cathedrals, and shows the method they used (with a rope) to figure out how thick the walls that support an arch need to be. He also says that these rules of thumb offer “provisional guidance” in that they have to interpreted and adapted to the particular project at hand.

He not only explains this process in his book but in several YouTube videos that are associated with the book. Here’s the explanation about how basically illiterate masons were able to something as large and complex as a cathedral.

Hamack’s insights might provide a new entry point for students learning about engineering. It could be fascinating to talk about rules of thumb as a type of knowledge we already use in our daily lives, often a type of implicit knowledge. Also, his advice on how engineers must deal with uncertainty could help those students who might struggle getting started on work without fully understanding what they are doing. In my view, he makes engineering and its practice more accessible and more inclusive for many.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Bill Hammack about his book, his videos and the classes he teaches on basic engineering at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.