Machina ex Deo: Seeing Engineering as Inspired by the Creator

Timothy J. Van Dyke

Keywords: Christian engineering education, Engineering as vocation, Faith–learning integration, Solution generation, Biomimetics

TL;DR: This paper argues that Christian engineering overlooks creative solution generation and proposes biomimetics—learning from God’s creation—as a way to integrate faith more fully into engineering practice and education.

Abstract: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1, NIV) And so with a simple statement, Moses describes a rich, multifaceted, complex, creative endeavor. Similarly, but in a much more limited way, when engineers create new technological solutions, they are engaged in a rich, multifaceted, creative, complex endeavor. When examining how the Christian faith relates to this endeavor, there are of course bound to be a variety of different approaches that can be used to examine how these two spheres intersect. While each of these different approaches might yield valuable insights into this intersection and valuable ideas of how a Christian should practice engineering, it is clear that no single approach to the issue will discover all possible influences of Christian faith on engineering. As a way to organize this discussion, it might be helpful to categorize these ideas by which steps of the engineering process are involved. As will be discussed in this paper, doing so shows that there has been limited discussion on the impact of Christian faith on one significant step in the work of engineers, and that is the step of creatively generating possible solutions to the problem that is being worked on. This is surprising since this step lies at the very heart of what engineers do and is the step that sets engineering apart from many other disciplines. However, it is clear that our Christian faith does impact this step as Christian engineers can look to the natural world as a source of inspiration for generating designs because we know the natural world was designed by an almighty God. So, biomimicry, designing based on the natural world, is a natural fit for Christian engineers. This suggests that the principles of biomimicry should be incorporated into Christian engineering education programs. This is, then, the goal of this paper: to briefly examine the ways in which the Christian faith has been said to impact engineering, to identify one significant aspect of the work of engineers which is often underemphasized in these considerations, to show how the impact of our Christian faith on this area naturally leads to the idea of biomimicry, and to consider how biomimicry can be incorporated into Christian engineering education programs.

Email Sharing: We authorize the sharing of all author emails with Program Chairs.

Data Release: We authorize the release of our submission and author names to the public in the event of acceptance.

Submission Number: 16