Reconciling Time Reversibility and Time Irreversibility: William Rankine and the Beginning of Mechanical Engineering Education

Abstract

The year 2008 marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of an important work in the history of mechanical engineering education. In 1858, William Rankine published his first book, A Manual of Applied Mechanics, the introduction to which was his inaugural lecture, entitled ‘Preliminary dissertation on the harmony of theory and practice in mechanics’. His ‘dissertation’ has very modern characteristics and today would be called a vision, mission and values statement. Rankine was a pioneer in engineering education, at a time when engineering courses were not recognised as fulfilling any degree requirements. The purposes of this paper are to remind mechanical engineering educators of the debt they owe to Rankine in establishing mechanical engineering as an academic discipline and to analyse the foundations of his ‘dissertation’ in order to understand his achievement. The philosophical foundations were based on Aristotle and the School of Scottish Common Sense. The empirical foundations were based on his work in solving problems in thermodynamics. I adopt a phenomenological conception of time and temporality to explain how Rankine succeeded in ensuring mechanical engineering a permanent place in academia by reconciling time reversibility and time irreversibility and giving mechanical engineering a temporality with twin planes: an absolute, symmetrical temporal plane, which gave it academic credibility by aligning it with the temporality of the natural sciences; and a forward, dissymmetrical temporal plane, which gave it intentionality.

Keywords

19th-century mechanical engineering education temporality time irreversibility time reversibility William Rankine

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