Engineering and the Humanities - Encounters, Epistemologies, and Emerging Challenges

This book presents the relationships and conflicts between the so-called two cultures, which separated the social and human sciences from the hard theoretical and applied sciences. Today more than ever, engineering, and especially young engineers, need to build connections and knots with other fields of knowledge that involve social sciences, ethics, and anthropology. The digital revolution has changed the knowledge’s paradigm and the traditional figure of the “engineer” is therefore obsolete. Computers are no longer tools, but ICT has entered our bodies and has deeply mutated our cognitive performance. Humanities, till today mostly separated from the hard field of engineering and industry, can offer new points of view for creative solutions, in present and future society. In the pages of this book, original paths in the definition of polytechnic culture are analyzed, also on the basis of the most recent experiences, with examples and case studies.