Formal methods versus engineering

Classical engineering is based on solid scientific and mathematical foundations, but neither the science, nor the mathematics, is simply borrowed from the scientists or the mathematicians. Engineers develop their own formulations of the relevant science and mathematics, adapted to support the engineering knowledge used in design of artefacts. There are many formulations of the same science and mathematics, as classical engineering is highly domain specific. A key question for Formal Methods Education is whether uses and formulations of mathematics used in software engineering should be analogous to the situation in classical engineering described above. The position advocated in this paper is that the classical engineering approach is also crucial for Formal Methods. We may well not be in a position to teach a proper formulation of formal methods until we have developed the appropriate reformulations of the usually mathematically oriented mathematics usually taught in computer science and software engineering programmes.