Disciplinary Responses to Theology Brief Preview

Engineering: Love Perhaps Conceived as Knowledge

Daniel Hastings

Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

My discipline is engineering (aerospace engineering in particular). Engineering at its best is about creating products, systems, and architectures which are responsive to a society’s needs and that improve the human condition. Examples are the provision of clean water, the electrification of society, and the air transportation system, among others. In my own field of aerospace and aeronautics, I would point to worldwide space-enabled internet. 

As a discipline, the desire of engineering and engineers to create these things for society is a kind of love conceived as knowledge. Of course, where this breaks down is that engineering can also create things which are not good for society, such as the nuclear weapons complex. or are at least neutral, such as the internet. Perhaps these are examples of anti-knowledge or the fruit of sin in the world.