工程研究——跨学科视野中的工程2026，Vol.18Issue(2)：155-169,15.DOI:10.3724/j.issn.1674-4969.20250172
科幻想象的工程美学建构——乌托邦、崇高与现代经验的重构
Aesthetic Construction of Engineering in Science Fictional Imagination:Utopia,Sublime,and Reconstruction of Modern Experience
摘要
Abstract
This article investigates science-fictional narratives through the lens of engineering aesthetics,with the aim of clarifying how engineering-oriented imagination is aesthetically articulated and why it matters for contemporary philosophy of technology and culture.While science fiction is frequently discussed in terms of scientific plausibility,technological imagination,or narrative innovation,existing scholarship rarely adopts the contemporary distinction between science-technology-engineering(STE)as a systematic analytic framework.This article addresses that gap by arguing that engineering constitutes a distinct aesthetic and philosophical dimension within science fiction,one that cannot be reduced to scientific theorization or technological instrumentality.The study focuses on engineering science fiction as a mode of speculative world-making in which large-scale systems,infrastructures,and integrated socio-technical environments become central aesthetic objects. The primary objective is to(1)differentiate science,technology,and engineering at the level of philosophical motivation and operative logic;(2)conceptualize the engineering sublime as a key aesthetic effect of engineering-oriented science fiction(includes utopian stories);and(3)explain how engineering imagination contributes to the reconstruction of modern experience,particularly through a Benjaminian account of"new sensibility".The article further aims to demonstrate the academic value of engineering aesthetics for cross-disciplinary dialogues among science fiction studies,aesthetics,and engineering philosophy. The study adopts a conceptual-analytical approach combining(1)philosophical differentiation of STE,(2)theoretical reconstruction of major science-fiction frameworks,and(3)close theoretical reading of canonical aesthetic and cultural-philosophical sources.First,it clarifies STE by distinguishing science as concept-and model-driven construction,technology as instrumental practice and mediation,and engineering as"one-off systemic construction"oriented toward feasibility under complex constraints.Second,it revisits key ontological accounts of science fiction by Darko Suvin and Fredric Jameson,treating utopian system-building as theoretical resources for identifying engineering-oriented narrative operations.Third,it reinterprets Immanuel Kant's theory of the sublime,using the categories of mathematical and dynamical sublimity to analyze how engineering systems produce artificial transcendence through scale,integration,and complexity.Finally,it draws on Walter Benjamin's reading of Lesabéndio to examine how engineering aesthetics participates in reshaping sensuous experience under industrial modernity. The article establishes four main findings.(1)Engineering-oriented science fiction foregrounds a sensuous register of systemic integration,in which infrastructures and engineered environments function as narrative engines and aesthetic forms.(2)Utopian and system-building writing can be understood as engineering speculation,insofar as it integrates scientific rationalities,techno-logical mediations,and social conditions into coherent,large-scale imaginaries that exceed individual experience.(3)The engi-neering sublime is characterized not by nature's overwhelming power,but by the artificial transcendence of socio-technical sys-tems and by the cognitive inaccessibility of professional complexity.This expands Kant's mathematical sublime:the unintuitive grasp of abstract and integrated complexity becomes a primary source of sublimity,and speculative elaboration becomes a cen-tral narrative mechanism that renders such complexity partially intelligible rather than merely alienating.(4)Beyond sublimity,Benjamin's interpretation of Lesabéndio indicates that engineering imagination also points toward new sensibilities that recon-struct modern experience and collective affect under technological modernity. The study's contribution lies in articulating engineering aesthetics as a transferable analytic vocabulary for interdisciplinary research and scholarly exchange across science fiction studies,aesthetics,and engineering philosophy.It also carries implications for engineering ethics and education by highlighting science fiction as a reflective medium for rehearsing systemic responsibility within future-oriented technological cultures.关键词
科幻/工程美学/想象/崇高/本雅明Key words
science fiction/engineering aesthetics/imagination/the sublime/Walter Benjamin分类
社会科学引用本文复制引用
冯原..科幻想象的工程美学建构——乌托邦、崇高与现代经验的重构[J].工程研究——跨学科视野中的工程,2026,18(2):155-169,15.基金项目
天津市哲学社会科学规划研究项目:德勒兹美学的媒介问题研究(TJZX23-002) （TJZX23-002）
