ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the nature of research which is required to provide knowledge of emergence that is useful to engineers in the conduct of engineering work. The discussion begins with three elements which form the foundation of the argument: the contrast of the purposes of engineering and science and the different perspectives of knowledge associated with those purposes; the diversity of views on “emergence” and an argument for working with one definition; and an outline of a framework for classifying the objectives of research activities associated with the kind of knowledge that is needed. These foundations are used to evaluate a number of approaches to research in engineering to assess the contribution that the research approaches make to discovery of matters associated with emergence.
