The Karl Popper quote: ‘Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.’
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his “piecemeal social engineering” is basically his term for democratic change, as opposed to an authoritarian construction of society.
This quote seems to be about Popper’s [Three Worlds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds).
So it’s a matter of understanding that the emergent properties of any change to society (the ends) are impossible to predict. However physical engineering (ie building a bridge), is all about trying to model the physical world and predict the resulting behavior of the structures. His point from this single sentence is vague without any context.
There is a famous saying, “anyone can build a bridge that stands up, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands up.” The act of engineering is to meet required specifications while minimizing cost and time. Technology is how we do that. I guess after all is said and done, though, you have to just try everything out to see what happens.
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