Resistencia al fuego de elementos constructivos de cerramiento

Taken together, the information summarised in Figures 7-1 to 7-3 gives us insight into some of the characteristics of disciplinary knowledge. As the knowledge under consideration in the five undergraduate university textbooks nominally covers the same epistemic content, it would be reasonable to expect quite significant overlap between such closely related fields as science and engineering science. This is indeed the case, but the analysis of the data from the textbooks also illustrates some important differences between knowledge in the different disciplinary fields. Broadly speaking, Figures 7-1 to 7-3 demonstrate that knowledge in the sciences tend to be positioned at the opposite end of the modality continua compared to the knowledge in the engineering sciences. This is illustrated in the overall general tendency for knowledge in the sciences to specialise towards universals, idealise in a way that contributes to abstract-ideal theorisation for the purpose of building theory, and present a normative inclination that was either absent or at best incidental. The engineering science knowledge, on the other hand, mostly specialises towards particulars, idealisation is strongly influenced by a demand for physical realisability of the knowledge, and a significant disposition towards normativity in the knowledge is evident. This is not to say that the engineering sciences ignore the need for explanations and predictions; rather, the valued engineering science knowledge is focused on explaining and predicting the behaviour of the artefact under the different conditions that impact on the functional and problem context. It is interesting to note that the differences are not necessarily a function of the particular conceptual content. An example is the overall

approach to thermodynamics where it is not the classical or statistical mechanical approach per se that predisposes specialisation towards particulars or universals. Although the chemistry text follows the same classical approach to thermodynamics as both engineering science texts (as opposed to the statistical mechanical approach in physics), chemistry knowledge is still clearly specialised towards universals rather than the particulars preferred in the engineering sciences. The continuum (rather than binary) nature of the modalities suggests the possibility of

variations in modal strength across and within broad disciplines. This is indeed confirmed in the engineering science data: the knowledge in the chemical engineering text is markedly less specialised towards particulars, less concerned with physical realisability in idealisation and less explicitly normative than the mechanical engineering knowledge. This is emphasised in Appendix A by the darker shading of the cells in the table where the chemical engineering knowledge differs from the expected coding for engineering science. There are different ways to interpret this difference between mechanical and chemical engineering science knowledge: firstly, considering the fundamental roots of chemical engineering as a discipline (‘chemical’

185 rather than ‘physical’), it could be an indication that chemical engineering curriculum

knowledge is closer to chemistry than mechanical engineering is to physics knowledge. From a historical perspective, the separation between physics and mechanical engineering applications and the development of mechanical engineering as a clearly identifiable field of study predates a similar move for chemical engineering (see the discussion in the historical section of chapter one of this thesis). This is not to suggest that there is an inevitable trajectory of increased separation between the sciences and engineering sciences over time though; factors other than merely the passage of time could play a role in this (see the rest of the discussion below). Secondly, the position of chemical engineering along the knowledge modality continua could be interpreted as referring to a stronger similarity between chemical engineering knowledge and the thermodynamics knowledge in both chemistry and physics. One possible explanation for this is the prominence of the influence of the atomic model of matter in all of these disciplines, specifically here with reference to thermodynamics. (More empirical work would be needed to establish whether the same could be said about other shared fields of knowledge between the disciplines.) In chemistry, chemical engineering and physics, atoms and molecules and

underlying molecular behaviour in the atomic model are significantly more prominent in the data, and are valued for explaining the macroscopic behaviour. In this chemical engineering knowledge may be more ‘science-like’ than knowledge in mechanical engineering, which relies less on microscopic underpinnings of macroscopic behaviour of engineering devices and such. Lastly (and perhaps not quite independent of the previous two suggestions), the difference in modal positions of mechanical and chemical engineering could suggest that mechanical engineering has developed a greater degree of specialisation in the Durkheimian sense (in terms of societal roles of the disciplines) from its closest root discipline (physics). There seems to be a greater epistemic emancipation evident in the mechanical engineering text. This

impression is strengthened in the greater emphasis in the mechanical engineering text on typical engineering devices; an explanation for this could possibly be found in a stronger ‘pull’ exerted by the field of practice on professional knowledge.

It is possible that empirical studies similar to the current one on content topics other than thermodynamics could illustrate similar variation within the sciences. This would have to be explored purposefully in follow-on studies28_.

28 In an article in the influential journal, Nature, Ball (2006) asks the provocative question whether the problem orientation of industrial chemistry, a branch of chemistry, in fact turns it into a form of

engineering, in its focus on “a quest for particular solutions to particular problems” (p.501) as it seeks to synthesise chemical compounds for specific needs. See also Bensaude-Vincent’s (2012) description of

186