NEWS 26 February 2026

Historical view on determinism and precision engineering design

Paralleling the historical beginnings of modern science, assessing and addressing variation in physical systems constitutes the foundation of precision engineering. Tycho Brahe gave us the measurement data to analyse the heavens.

Kepler and Newton gave us laws (models) from that data. Natural law implied (to Laplace) a natural absolute determinism. Human transcendence, however, allows the precision engineer to intelligently intervene into this absolute determinism to bring nature into predictably precise subjection for profitable uses. To conclude this Mikroniek article, indeterminability is briefly addressed. (Image source: Tychonis Brahe, Astronomi Instaurat Mechanica)

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References ...

DSPE Opto-Mechatronics Symposium 2026

The seventh edition of the DSPE Opto-Mechatronics Symposium will take place on 8 October 2026. This year’s theme is ‘The opto-mechatronics of telescopes: from tiny to extremely large’.

DSPE and LiS join forces

SDPE supports the nationwide expansion of the Leidse instrumentmakers School (LiS) to strengthen the pipeline of precision manufacturing professionals in the Netherlands.

Structure-preserving model reduction

High-precision machines are often modelled as assemblies of flexible substructures, which preserves physical insight but leads to models that are too large for efficient dynamic analysis and control design.