ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the act of production is beautiful, as much as the artefacts that are made; that there is a sense of beauty in the care and effort of production, as well as, or even instead of, a visual pleasure. To an engineer, workmanship trumps aesthetics. The goal of engineering is to make something that works. This may or may not be at the expense of its attractiveness, but the physical appearance of the artefact is determined to a large extent by the constraints of the necessary function. The common theme is knowledgeable behaviour as the underpinning notion of beauty: doing the right things, and doing them well, is what is being lauded and not just the aesthetic consequences. Where Kant differs from the ancient Greek notion of kalon is in his efforts to separate out the decorative or beauty from the noble or admirable.
