Reconstructing past events : a study of engineering failure investigations
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- When a major engineering product failed, a failure investigation is often conducted to prevent similar failures in the future. In this dissertation, I propose an account of the epistemology and methodology of engineering failure investigations, based on a close examination of five major plane crash investigations conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part consists of the five case studies. In each case study, I summarize the entire investigation process, focusing on articulating the questions that arise and the evidential reasoning that helped resolve each question. The second part examines how the investigators infer causes of failure events. The type of causal inference used in failure investigations typically proceeds from effects to causes, hence it is called reverse causal inference. I identify three types of reverse causal inference in engineering failure investigations: feature dependence, additional outcomes, and process tracing. The third part examines how the investigators construct narratives of failure events and support them with evidence. I argue that both the construction and the justification of a narrative of a failure event depend on the question-and-answer process in the investigation, which I call the question dynamics of the investigation. I examine three main components of the question dynamics: the resolution of questions, the significance of questions, and the arising of questions. I conclude the dissertation with an account of the coherence of narratives, which captures the intuitive idea that the pieces of a coherent narrative "fit together" very well.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Wang, Yafeng |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Longino, Helen E |
| Thesis advisor | Longino, Helen E |
| Thesis advisor | Hills, David James, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Icard, Thomas |
| Thesis advisor | Smith, George, 1949 March 4- |
| Degree committee member | Hills, David James, 1947- |
| Degree committee member | Icard, Thomas |
| Degree committee member | Smith, George, 1949 March 4- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Philosophy. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Yafeng Wang. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Philosophy. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Yafeng Wang
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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