I kid myself that I think like a scientist, and sometimes maybe I actually do. Yet engineers are a specialized breed. My father and ex-husband were engineers; one of my sons is also one. They do not all think alike, nor do any of them think quite like I (and you?) do. But we are occasionally capable of managing what I'll call cross-species communication. That's why I wanted to share, in this post, the results of studies done by Nancy J. Nersessian of the School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, and her Ph.D. level researchers.

Nersessian began by posing the question, "How do engineering scientists think?" The resulting journal article in Topics in Cognitive Science quotes Daniel Dennett: "Just as you cannot do very much carpentry with your bare hands, there's not much thinking you can do with your bare mind."

The researchers, who received training in ethnography, qualitative methods, and cognitive-historical analysis, focused on the day-to-day activities at two laboratories, specifically around the use of artifacts (models or devices). These artifacts were complex entitles such as a neuron dish that represented brain activity.