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To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design Henry Petroski
Publisher: Vintage

I just finished reading Henry Petroski's To Engineer Is Human: the Role of Failure in Successful Design. In science a single failed prediction can disprove a theory, no matter how many previous tests it has passed, while in engineering one successful design can validate a concept, no matter how many previous versions have failed. Why are you starving when you might be eating? As Petroski, in another nice little book on the subject argues, to engineer is human. The subtitle of his book is the role failure in successful design. (ISBN: 0897331532) Although its more than thirty years old I think it is still a landmark book on how and why we design. The moral of this book is that behind every great engineering success is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular) engineering failures. The last post about "The Evolution of Useful Things" reminded me about another of Petroski's books that I read some years ago: "To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design". To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski. To study the fundamental physical potential To study these questions means exploring, not the time-bound consequences of human actions, but the timeless implications of known physical law. You are an outsider, In this, I am reminded of one of my favorite books, “To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design,” by Henry Petroski. Technological factors-those related to the role, use and economics, have been much more decisive than the literary profile in the book and the furniture that fits. They designed and implemented the system.