Differences Between Technology and Engineering in General and Focusing

on this Difference as Related to Chemical Engineering

Although the two terms “technology” and “engineering” are interlaced, the principles of

each subject and their capabilities are quite different. Generally, definition of technology is

broader than that of engineering, and from a normative standpoint, it is a part of

coevolution process with society. Technology emerges from ideas and wills for creating

and utilizing the artifacts that fulfill human needs or desires. The outcome of technology is

just producing and employing objects, and it does not depend upon thinking and using

design equations, theories, etc. Accordingly, skills and arts without specific knowledge are

sufficient in creating and managing the technology. Understanding and improving the

existing technology, or resolving the problems pertinent to it requires utilizing principles of

science and engineering knowledge. Technology is more descriptive and empirical than

engineering.

In general, it is usually not enough to create a technically successful product, and it must

also meet further requirements. For example, it is essential to introduce a new product that

performs as well as expected, does not cause unintended harm to the public at large,

especially the environment, and also achieves sustainability.

Engineers take this responsibility to identify, understand and interpret the constraints on a

design in order to produce a successful result. They typically attempt to predict how well

their designs will perform to their specifications prior to full-scale production. In

developing technology, engineers carefully consider the constraints including available

resources, physical or technical limitations, flexibility for future modifications and some

other factors, such as cost, safety, marketability and serviceability.

Engineering is then defined as a creative application of scientific, economic, social and

practical principles to design, construct, operate, develop and maintain structures,

machines, devices, apparatus, systems, materials and/or manufacturing processes as

required for an intended function, economics of operation or safety to life and property.

With full cognizance of the object or process, engineers forecast the behavior of their

designed equipment and/or plants under specific operating conditions.

Engineering is the ability not only to create a technology but also to solve problems,

improve the process and construct the product by applying the engineering principles.

Engineering principles involve a systematic and often iterative approach to accomplishing

goals in order to meet human needs and/or society concerns. Engineers should know how to

define a solvable problem, to test the potential solutions and finally to reach an optimal

solution by making trade-offs among multiple concerns, such as functional, ethical,

economic, esthetic and social factors. Engineers apply mathematics, other sciences and

economics accompanied with their logic and tacit knowledge to design novel processes or

to find appropriate solutions to existing problems or to improve the status quo. This job is

basically performed by creating proper mathematical models (design equations) that allow

analyzing the system and/or its operation. Engineers respond to the interests and needs of

society and in turn affect society and the environment by bringing about technological

changes. Consequently, it is fair to note that engineers have an important role in the

coevolution process of society and technology. Engineering is more quantitative and less

empirical than technology.

The distinction between engineering and technology emanates primarily from differences in

their educational programs. Engineering curriculums are oriented toward development of

conceptual skills and include a sequence of fundamentals and courses built on a foundation

of complex mathematics as well as science courses. Technology programs are geared

toward applications and provide the students with only introductory mathematics and

science courses accompanied with a qualitative introduction to engineering fundamentals.

Relying on these differences, nowadays, engineering and technology programs are

evaluated and accredited using two separate sets of accreditation criteria. Throughout

history, technology has been created to satisfy human wishes and requirements. Much of

modern technology is a product of science and engineering, and existing technological tools

are used in both fields.

Technology education relies on study of the human-made world, including artifacts,

processes and their underlying principles and concepts, and the overall aim of technology

education is to provide students to participate effectively in technologically dependent

world. There are no constraints in developing and using technology. However, in

engineering design, a great attention is made on constraints including the laws of nature, or

science, time, money, available materials, ergonomics, environmental regulations,

manufacturability and reparability. In this regard, engineering utilizes concepts in science

and management as well as technological tools to accomplish their responsibilities.

Graduates from engineering programs are called engineers, while graduates of technology

programs are called technologists. Clearly, engineering graduates’ career differs from those

with technology background, technologist. Engineering graduates are with a breadth and

depth of knowledge that allows them to function as conceptual designers and operators in

product and process development. Once engineers enter the workforce, they typically spend

their time planning, while technologists spend their time making plans work.

Nowadays, the engineering disciplines are thought as the repositories of technological

knowledge and their practitioners as the primary agents of technological change in their

respective industries. The growth of useful technological knowledge is the product of what

goes on inside the engineering disciplines. To learn how technological learning

accumulates, it is necessary to look carefully at the engineering professions. For example,

in early days of chemical industries, technological knowledge simply was used in the

creation of a particular and singular product or process. However, with the development of

the concept of unit operations and its codification in textbooks of chemical engineering, a

given amount of inventive effort led to a larger spread out to future inventors. As a result,

chemical engineering was developed and replaced chemical technology. In other words,

chemical engineering came into existence in response to the emergence of new industries

and technologies.

Chemical engineering is a body of knowledge about the design of product, which their

production involves chemical transformations, as well as their process plants.

In technology, an object is produced to serve a function, and in general, goal or product is

not researched itself. According to the preliminary definition of technology as “the effort to

avoid effort,” the results or outcomes of the technology are not concerned. However, the

commercialization potential of any technological object, its further development and its

impact on the society and environment should be well researched and identified. The

importance of these considerations was strongly felt when World War II began.

After World War II, the empirical training of engineers proved inadequate to meet the

growing demands for new processes and hence chemical engineering education started to

change. Chemical engineering was becoming more focused on science and mathematics

than on engineering tradition. Aris and Amundson began emphasizing the importance of

mathematical modeling using dimensionless quantities in reactor design. Bird presented a

unified mathematical description of mass, momentum and energy transfer in their now

famous text, “Transport Phenomena.” Their work helps encourage greater mathematical

competence in chemical engineering education. Engineers are, nowadays, expected to be

experts in mathematics and relevant sciences for design, innovation and trouble shooting of

a system or process.

The engineering tasks are generally creative and iterative that requires multiplicity of

knowledge, which constitutes the essence of research, modeling, fabricating, testing and

communicating. Evidently, these are not concepts only associate with the mathematics and

sciences learned by an engineer at the university, and engineers must update their

knowledge and skills. Besides that, engineers mostly face a great challenge after

graduation, which is the expectations of industries, as they usually prefer to employ multi-

disciplinary and skilled engineers who able to work at different departments, such as

design, innovation, maintenance and marketing to provide both the plant and customer

satisfaction. Engineering research in industry and research institute consists of a wide

variety of activities ranging from study of material properties for possible future application

to the testing necessary to establish design parameters or to verify the adequacy of new

design concepts. Engineers are recommended to focus on not only a specific disciplinary

but also multi-disciplinary research. The research in engineering must use quantitative as

well as qualitative approaches. The impacts of technological innovation on society must be

assessed by considering evolving marketing, environmental, sustainability, legal and

commercial implications.

One of the most critical elements of the innovation process is the long-term research

required to transform new knowledge generated by fundamental scientific discoveries into

the novel new products, processes and services required by society. Consequently, in the

engineering carrier, research plays a major role and is the most critical step. Engineers

spend a lot of time researching about the product or process they are working on. They also

research to learn about the problem they need to resolve as well as to gain information

when they run into difficulties. Accordingly, they need to keep on learning new materials

throughout their career that means Life Long Learning (L3) is vital for engineers.

Technology and engineering possess two different stages of development, i.e., the route to

engineering started by science, followed by applied science, followed by technology and

then followed by engineering.

Therefore, we should be careful in using terms of engineering and technology.