A reflection about the relations between engineering and war and how they could be changed into relations with peace

1. Alvise Mattozzi
alvise.mattozzi@polito.it
Come si
ingegnerizza la
pace?
Engineering
peace?
Milano, 29 settebre 2023
IULM
Il senso della guerra

2. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Sharing of series of reflections
and questions.

3. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi

4. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Contribution of engineering to war

5. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Contribution of war to engineering

6. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Engineering is born out of war and
military exigencies

7. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Military school, under the Ministère des Armées.

8. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Civil engineering is just a civil way
of bending engineering, which was
in itself military.

9. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Gaspard Monge, Memoire on the exacavation and embankment

10. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Gaspard Monge, Description of the Art of Building cannons

11. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Gaspard Monge, Descriptive geometry

12. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
War is an epistemic dispositif.

13. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
War is an epistemic dispositif.
War requires and produces
knowledge

14. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Does peace work also as an
epistemic dispositif?

15. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Why doesn't peace work as an
epistemic dispositif?

16. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Can peace work as an
epistemic dispositif?

17. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
- War knowledge used for peace
- Knowledge not used directly to
create or maintain peace, but to
create the conditions for peace.

18. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
war/peace
not a symmetric dichotomy

19. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi

20. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Si vis pacem, para bellum
If you want peace, prepare war.

21. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
para bellum
prepare war.

22. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Therefore, who wants peace, must prepare war.
Who wants victory, must train diligently soldiers.
Who wants favorable events, must fight with art, not
at random.
Vegezio, Military Art, IV Sec.

23. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
"preparing war"
Today
"engineering war"

24. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
What about peace?
Preparing peace?

25. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
"Beati i costruttori di pace" ["operatori", "quelli che si adoperano"]
"Blessed are the peacemakers"
Making? Building? Engineering? Peace?

26. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Ballistics, a word apparently originating in the text
Ballistica et Acontismologia (1644) by Marin
Mersenne [12, p. 106], comprises both interior
ballistics, the study of the chemistry and
thermodynamics that occurs in the barrel of a gun,
and exterior ballistics, the study of the motion of an
object projected from a gun.
William W. Hackburn, "The Science of Ballistics:
Mathematics Serving the Dark Side", 2006

27. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Tartaglia, Nova Scientia

28. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Ballistics is the fascinating product of the
interaction between technology, government, the
military, science, mathematics, and society in
general. It was born of new technologies, its
development encouraged by kings, its creations
exploited by generals, its principles studied by
scientists for whom the nature of motion was
primary, its equations solved by mathematicians
contending over calculus, and its results visited
upon ordinary people. 

29. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
[…] the research of Robins, Euler, and others was
soon incorporated into the curricula of military
schools and universities; the military employed
carefully packaged ballistics theory on the
battlefield; governments established proving
grounds for testing new weapons and determining
drag functions. Large-scale organizational
computing is one of the social effects of ballistics
research; because of the difficulty in hiring men
during the war, many of the human computers
hired by Moulton at his ballistics office in
Washington were women who had been
mathematics majors at university. 

30. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
The role of women in organizational scientific
computing grew enormously thereafter, until
computing of this kind was replaced by electronic
computers such as the ENIAC, which was itself
invented primarily to compute ballistic tables.
Ballistics research, as well as the government and
military funding available to mathematicians who
engage in it, continue to affect the mathematics
community and cause division within it.
William W. Hackburn, "The Science of Ballistics:
Mathematics Serving the Dark Side", 2006

31. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Firearms

32. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
It is commonly agreed that the nomads lost their
role as innovators with the advent of firearms, in
particular the cannon ("gunpowder overtook
them"). But it was not necessarily because they did
not know how to use them. Not only did armies like
the Turkish army, whose nomadic traditions
remained strong, develop extensive firepower, a
new space, but additionally, and even more
characteristically, light artillery was thoroughly
integrated into mobile formations of wagons, pirate
ships, etc. If the cannon marks a limit for the
nomads, it is on the contrary because it implies an
economic investment that only a State apparatus
can make (even commercial cities do not suffice).
Deleuze, Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 1980

33. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Not only a strict economic investment,
but also a knowledge investment.

34. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
State
Science and Technology

35. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
SUMMARY OF THE REPORT
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS IS ESSENTIAL
Progress in the war against disease depends upon
a flow of new scientific knowledge. New products,
new industries, and more jobs require continuous
additions to knowledge of the laws of nature, and
the application of that knowledge to practical
purposes.
Similarly, our defense against aggression demands
new knowledge so that we can develop new and
improved weapons. This essential, new knowledge
can be obtained only through basic scientific
research.

36. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
But without scientific progress no amount of
achievement in other directions can insure our
health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the
modern world.

37. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ?

38. G u e r r a , I n g e g n e r i a , A m b i e n t i e T e r r i t o r i | S a p e r i d e l l a g u e r r a , s a p e r i d e l l ' i n g e g n e r i a
Conversazioni in Biblioteca – Saperi si incontrano

39. G u e r r a , I n g e g n e r i a , A m b i e n t i e T e r r i t o r i | S a p e r i d e l l a g u e r r a , s a p e r i d e l l ' i n g e g n e r i a
Conversazioni in Biblioteca – Saperi si incontrano

40. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
State
Science and Technolog

41. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
State
Science and Technology
Engineering of war

42. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi

43. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
What about peace?

44. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Si vis pacem para pacem?

45. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
"Beati i costruttori di pace" ["operatori", "quelli che si adoperano"]
"Blessed are the peacemakers"
Making? Building? Engineering? peace

46. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Rete Pace Disarmo: “Si fermi la
guerra in Ucraina e parta un vero
processo di Pace”

47. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Rete Pace Disarmo: “Si fermi la
guerra in Ucraina e parta un vero
processo di Pace”

48. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Peace as the end of war.
Peace as not-war.

49. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
More than building peace, is
unbulding, deconstructing war.

50. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Unlearning.
Uninventing.
Donald MacKenzie, Graham Spinardi,
"Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the
Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons", 1995

51. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
A constitutive delay
of the discourse of peace?
Is the discourse of peace out of time?

52. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
a b
¬a
¬b
A discourse of subcontraries?

53. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Another possibility:
Talking about defense.

54. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Another possibility:
Talking about defense
as civic-based defense (Gene Sharp)

55. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
By "civilian-based defense" is meant here a
national defense policy to deter and defeat
aggression, both internal (such as coups d'etat)
and external (such as invasions). This
capacity is to be achieved by preparing the
population and institutions for massive nonviolent
resistance and defiance.
Transarmament vs disarmament
"Transannament" is the process of change-over
from military-based defense to civilian-
based defense

56. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
The steps in the incremental adoption of civilian-
based defense will be of varying substance
and duration. There is no blueprint of steps and
time scale that is applicable to all
countries and situations. In general, however, the
following elements will be included in
the process of transarmament
• research;
• public education;
• policy and feasibility studies;
• evaluation by the public, private organizations,
official institutions, defense departments and
ministries, and the legislatures;

57. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
• introduction of a modest civilian-based
component (perhaps for specific purposes);
• preparing and training of the populace;
• consideration of adding other purposes for which
civilian-based defense may be utilized;
• legislative and administrative action on these
decisions;
• strengthening the capacities of civilian-based
defense;
and
• unification of the defense policy.

58. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
What about engineering?
What about "materiality"?

59. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Engineering for civil-based defense.

60. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi

61. C o m e s i i n g e g n e r i z z a l a p a c e ? .
Alvise Mattozzi
Si vis pacem, ingenia pacem