By Design: Ethics Theology and the Practice of Engineering

Both engineering and human living take place in a messy world one chock full of unknowns and contingencies. Design reasoning is the way engineers cope with real-world contingency. Because of the messiness books about engineering design cannot have ideal solutions printed in the back in the same way that mathematics textbooks can. Design reasoning does not produce a single ideally correct answer to a given problem but rather generates a wide variety of rival solutions that vie against each other for their relative level of satisfactoriness. A reasoning process analogous to design is needed in ethics. Since the realm of interpersonal relations is itself a fluid and highly contingent real-world affair design reasoning offers the promise of a useful paradigm for ethical reasoning. This volume undertakes two tasks. First it employs design reasoning to illustrate how technological artifacts can be assessed for their inherent moral properties. Second it uses the design paradigm as a means for bringing engineering ethics into conversation with Christian theology in order to show how each can be for the other a catalyst for the revolutionary task of living by design. By Design first draws a parallel between the discipline of engineering and the discipline of ethics by identifying both as areas that (to use the authors term) are messy and hence require the use of heuristics. It is extremely well written well researched and well illustrated with numerous authoritative examples carefully chosen from engineering and religion. I highly recommend this book. --Billy V. Koen Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering The University of Texas at Austin Kallenbergs understanding and use of the design process allows readers to embrace problems of increasing ethical density. Not only will this appeal to engineers but it will guide them toward appreciating all the gray areas in real decision making. --Andrew P. Murray Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of Dayton Brad J. Kallenberg is Professor of Theology at the University of Dayton in Dayton Ohio. He is author of Ethics as Grammar (2001) Live to Tell (2002) God and Gadgets (2011) and numerous scholarly articles.