Engineering and Descartes

So how about Rene Descartes? An interesting fellow, 1596-1650 and penned the now famous line “Cogito ergo sum” (for you Latin scholars and much corrupted by my sociological friend – “Have spanner so am engineer”, irreverent but curiously apt). Rene was a man frustrated with the state of things in his profession and dared to think up new ideas as to how his profession could move forward.

In doing so he applied a rigorously logical approach to his endeavours. Essentially he set out to strip bare the theoretical framework of his profession until he could find its fundamental source (or truth). His method involved four steps:

First – never accept anything as true that he did not know to be evidently true, that is to say, avoid precipitancy and prejudice
Second – divide each of the difficulties that he examined into as many parts as possible in order to best solve it
Third – start by thinking about the simplest and easiest part to solve before moving to the more complex objects
Fourth – check everything, taking care to have omitted nothing

A blueprint for engineering method? Are Engineers Descartian disciples? Do Engineers pay sufficient homage to Descartes?

Perhaps the philosophers out there in cyber space can shed more light on the works of Descartes and how they relate to the world of philosophy and of course engineering. Should Descartes be regarded an engineering hero, having contributed deliberately or inadvertently to the development of engineering thought?

Questions, questions!

For those with an interest, Rene Descartes: Discourse on method and the meditations, in the Penguin Classics series is a very good read (only a slim volume, always the best I find).