On engineering. For as long as I remember, I have been captivated by the artifacts around me, things and "staff". I wanted to know how they are made, from what they are made, what they are for, what makes them tick or move. When I was seven, so the family story goes, I bust a trumpet just to find out what makes sound inside it. Over years I have learned that any single artifact embodies not only enormous human ingenuity but also our deep perceptions of life. My obsession with clocks, for instance, reflects my respectfulness to these practical mechanical devices as well as my fascination with time (would there be a "time" without periodic events in nature?). But above all, throughout my life, I was fascinated by bridges: whether built of wood, stone, iron, steel, or concrete, they occupy my mind in a very special way. Not only the bridges listed as engineering marvels but even small wooden structures across mountain streams, like those I have built as a boy-scout, engage my thoughts in a profoundly respectful, almost worshipful way. Recently, on a long flight over Atlantic, I realized, I believe I did, why it is so: bridges encompass the very essence of engineering more deeply than any other human-made structure. And, this recalls my life-long discontent: why engineering plays a second fiddle to art, philosophy and science?
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"The transient practice of engineering has been by and large an invisible and unrecorded aspect of the history of civiliza-tion. While we do have artifacts from all ages that we recog-nize as tools, structures, or machines, we tend to see them as discrete pieces of material detritus in the context of cultu-ral development. It is less easy to deal with the origins of those artifacts as deliberate acts of invention and the evolu-tion of them as deliberate acts of engineering." [H. Petrovski: The pencil, Faber & Faber, London, 1989.] To say that engineering is as old as civilization itself, whether it is recorded or not, does not gratify enough. An astonishing imagination in engineering, for the most part independent of philosophy and science and to a great extent art in itself, is materialized in the artifacts designed to be used. Engineering artifacts wear out while pieces of art and writings on philoso-phy and science are preserved and cherished; this shapes our awareness of and our attitudes toward not only common things, processes and events but also the ideas on which they are based: we are likely not to recognize their intrinsic, permanent, or special values. Because of book records, we know much more about unsuccessful scientific theories and social utopias then we do about engineering achievements which are in the base of our civilization. The first sketch engineer does in pencil, usually on scrap paper, is rarely saved and, yet, by the emotional and intellectual involvement, it is a piece of art. Engineering artifacts wear out and they are regularly replaced by technically advanced models. But it is new technique not new engineering: engineering principles which are embedded into a particular artifact are weavers of the technological, social, cultural, and political aspects of our life and they are ageless. |
Bridges, more than any other human-made structure, radiate the timelessness and boundlessness of engineering. Bridges span the space in front of our eyes and they span the time of our civilization.
Art, philosophy, and science are specialized representations of life. Engineering is life itself.
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Krešimir J. Adamić
