ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the world of the engineer and the case studies: the development of the Plumbicon television pickup tube, the design of a psychiatric hospital and the modification of a plant. With reference to these case studies which shows that an engineer has to deal with three kinds of complexity: the different aspects of the process of designing, the requirements set by the various groups involved in the design, and the complexity of the design itself. These different kinds of complexity renders the work of the engineer extremely challenging. Finally it demonstrates the phenomenon abstraction, which plays an important part in technological research, characterised by detachment from the various forms of complexity. Each of these kinds of complexity has its own mechanisms and phenomena. This analysis also gives a better insight into technological research that, there is a deliberate disregard for the various forms of complexity in order to be able to investigate only one mechanism or phenomenon.
