Streak Plating and Silicon: An STS Re-Examining of Engineering from within the Discipline

• In Event: Regenerating Research Culture: Feminist STS Approaches to STEM Graduate Methods

Abstract

Engineering, by one definition, is a practice of shaping material reality. But how does material reality shape back? In this paper I will attempt to approach this question through the lens of two research projects with which I have been involved as a PhD student in electrical engineering. One of these projects involved integrated circuit design - the shaping of metals with predictable properties into digital logic - and the other involved studying the electronic properties of bacteria, a highly complex and much less predictable system. I found that in addition to employing very different scientific tools and methodologies, these two research projects were married to very different assumptions about the material world and our ways of knowing it. In order to better to better differentiate these different ways of knowing and the possibilities they hold, I will examine the parallel histories of digital logic and microbiology, especially systems biology and the study of biofilms.
I will argue that buried within what STEM fields claim as part of their disciplines, as well as at their margins, is the potential for a more systemic and situated type of scientific knowledge, a different definition for what a “scientist” or “engineer” can be, and a different relationship between scientific knowledge and material agency. To make this case I will draw upon other examples within or parallel to STEM disciplines, such as examples within agriculture (differences between industrial farming and indigenous farming practices) and medicine (differences between traditional medicine and practices such as midwifery).

Author

• James Dylan Rees, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute