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Appendix
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Engineering in an Increasingly
Complex Society
Historical Perspectives on Education, Practice, and Adaptation in
American Engineering
A Report Prepared by Arthur L.
Donovan
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for the Panel
on Engineering Interactions With Society
This report attempts to provide a preliminary yet comprehensive
overview of engineering as a social and cultural activity. It draws
on historical studies presented at a conference sponsored by the
National Research Council: Engineering Interactions With Society:
Issues, Challenges, and Responses in the History of Professional
Engineering and Engineering Education, held in Washington, D.C.,
July 19–21, 1983. The report begins by characterizing
engineering in three ways: as a distinctive type of knowledge, as a
profession, and as a social practice. Three types of adaptation in
engineering are then considered through a review of representative
cases. The first type involves the interaction of science and
engineering, the second the response to technological innovation,
the third the influence of institutional factors. The report then
examines the relationship between engineering and management and
the implications this relationship has for engineering education.
The final section of the report reviews selected historical cases
of potential crisis in the engineering manpower supply system and
the ways in which engineers present their work and their profession
to themselves and the general public.
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Contents
The Nature of Engineering
83
Patterns of Adaptation
96
Engineering and Management
110
Engineering and Social Change
120
Conclusions and Recommendations
128
Acknowledgments
129
Participants, Conference on Engineering
Interactions With Society
130
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The Nature of Engineering
Introduction
It would be convenient were we able to begin our investigation
of engineering with uncontroversial definitions of what engineering
is and what it means to be an engineer. The fact is, however, that
engineering encompasses such a complex and highly varied set of
activities, and engineers have such a diverse set of skills and
interests, that simple definitions are quite incapable of being
both comprehensive and useful. Indeed, were we to begin with
definitions, we would be answering at the outset, at least by
implication, the very questions we have set out to investigate.
Therefore, rather than proceeding abstractly and axiomatically, we
will approach our subject more tentatively and from several vantage
points, always seeking to illuminate its many facets while slowly
building a picture of the whole. This is a method of investigation
historians find both congenial and informative, but it is not an
approach used only by historians. It is a method that those charged
with characterizing contemporary engineering also find useful.
The National Science Foundation, which collects statistical
information on the education and employment of American engineers,
has developed a three-part definition that includes as an engineer
anyone who meets two of its three criteria. These criteria,
formulated as questions, ask 1) Was the person educated as an
engineer? 2) Does the person consider him- or herself an engineer?
and 3) Is the person employed in a position classified as an
engineering job? These three questions provide a good starting
point for an investigation into the nature of engineering, for each
directs our attention to a different way of conceiving of the
subject.
Asking if a person was educated as an engineer emphasizes the
importance of formalized knowledge and knowledge acquisition in
modern engineering as well as the role that schools of engineering
play in certifying that their graduates are adequately trained to
enter the profession. Since control of a specialized body of
knowledge is one of the defining features of every profession, the
ways in which that knowledge is systematized and transmitted to
those wishing to enter the profession is a matter of great
importance. While in the past engineers, like other professionals,
acquired their characteristic skills through apprenticeship, today
formal training in a postsecondary professional school is expected
of all beginning engineers. The transmission of formalized
knowledge is certainly the main concern of these schools, but
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we should also be mindful of the ways in which they socialize
aspiring engineers in the patterns of thought and conduct
appropriate to their profession. Such socialization was clearly a
major part of the experience of apprenticeship, and today it
remains a large part of what engineers learn during their early
years on the job. One particularly fascinating question, but one
that is difficult to answer, asks how the responsibility
simultaneously to socialize and educate affects the ways in which
the central ideas of engineering education are conceptualized and
conveyed in engineering schools.
Asking if a person considers him- or herself an engineer directs
attention away from questions of public certification and toward
the individual's professional self-image. This is not to say that
one can simply certify oneself as a professional engineer, for such
clearly is not the case. But beyond the educational attainments and
memberships in societies that one expects of a professional lie
questions of self-description that are of crucial importance to the
individual and to the profession of engineering as a whole. What
does it mean to conceive of oneself as a professional engineer and
how does it influence one's conduct when dealing with members of
other professions and with those who are not professionals? And if
one moves from a job that requires engineering expertise to one
that is essentially managerial, as so many engineers do, in what
sense is one still a professional engineer? These are questions of
considerable significance to engineers as they fashion their
careers and to those who wish to understand better the nature of
engineering.
Identifying engineers by referring to the jobs they perform
appears to be a direct and uncomplicated way of getting at our
central question, yet here, too, the situation is more complex than
appears at first sight. There are, of course, certain engineering
specialties that are legally defined for purposes of certification.
One can also survey engineering employment and identify the various
jobs that require certain specialties in engineering. But a closer
look at the actual employment decisions and career patterns of
those who consider themselves engineers reveals a much greater
variety of options and actions than such formal classifications
would lead one to expect. Not only do engineers move between
specialties, employers in private industry and in the government
frequently hire engineers for reasons that have little to do with
their particular technical competence. The most interesting
question, therefore, is how employers seeking to get a particular
job done communicate with engineers attempting to construct
rewarding careers. It is the agreements they reach that determine
which jobs are to be considered engineering jobs, and seen in this
light, it is evident that the list of jobs that fall into this
category will vary greatly over time.
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Engineering as a Method for Solving
Problems
Engineers take pride in ''getting the job done.'' They feel they
are particularly well equipped for the tasks they undertake because
they bring to them the principles of analysis and problem
resolution they learned while studying to become engineers. These
principles are commonly referred to as "the engineering method" and
they are usually learned in classes devoted to engineering design.
Eugene Ferguson, reflecting on his own experience as an engineering
student, recalled being taught that "the first thing you do in
design is to draw a circle around the system under consideration in
order to define the boundaries and control whatever may cross
them." He also pointed out that this approach to design, which
presumes that the system under examination can be successfully
isolated and controlled, was first developed by Italian military
engineers in the sixteenth century. Whereas their predecessors had
designed fortresses that incorporated whatever advantages were
offered by the local landscape, the sixteenth-century Italian
engineers argued for a more abstract approach. Favoring a purely
geometric and symmetric design to one that embodied local features,
they argued that the ideal fortress would be located on an open
plain. The surrounding territory was to be stripped of any
structures that might give aid to an attacking force, a stipulation
that was captured by the pithy phrase of a seventeenth-century
French general, "suburbs are fatal to fortresses." Fortress design
was still being taught on these principles at West Point as late as
1860, and the more general" engineering method" embodied in this
approach to design continued to inform engineering education up to
the very recent past.
Ferguson's story may be taken as a challenge to reexamine what
we mean when we speak of the engineering method. Can it be that
despite the vast expansion of our engineering knowledge since the
sixteenth century, we still are using methods of analysis and
design introduced over 400 years ago? This is a difficult question,
for while on the one hand it is quite clear that in actual practice
engineers use many different methods, the idea that there is a
method common to all engineering is still a central concept both in
engineering education and among those who believe they can identify
an approach to problem solving that is distinctive to
engineering.
Can the so-called engineering method be defined in a way that
enables us to distinguish engineering from other human endeavors?
While engineering is a practical activity, so are cooking and child
care. And while the engineering method is rational and empirical,
so too are the methods used by scientists and judges. We get a bit
closer to the
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specific features of engineering when its method is
characterized as reductive. When engineers engage a problem, they
sharply delimit the number of parameters examined and focus on
those that show some promise of enabling them to control the
structure or process in question. While engineering shares with
science the search for causal understanding, it differs from
science in treating that understanding as a means to control rather
than as an end itself. Engineers also differ from scientists in
what might be called their propensity for conceptual innovation.
Whereas scientists are free to develop new concepts as necessary,
while deferring until later questions about the "reality" of the
entities they propose, engineers are much more constrained by the
need to ensure that the concepts they use in analysis and
explanation refer to physical entities and conditions that can be
subjected to human control. If this characterization of the
engineering method is correct, then this method powerfully
influences the determination of which problems are to be considered
engineering problems, as well as how those problems are to be
analyzed and resolved.
While the above description of the engineering method helps
spell out some of the ideas associated with this concept, it
remains quite abstract and certainly does not provide a sufficient
account of the nature of engineering. Even at the level of method,
this generally conceived view of the subject omits all the detail
that informs the methods actually used by practicing engineers. It
also says nothing about the substantive knowledge that engineers
utilize when analyzing and solving problems. As Edward Constant has
pointed out, the knowledge engineers find useful can range from the
most abstract and general scientific knowledge (one thinks of the
Euclidean geometry employed by the Italian fortress builders) to
the most specific and context-dependent knowledge acquired by
experience (such as the knowledge possessed by the stonecutters who
built fortress walls). Engineers spend a great deal of their time
acquiring, evaluating, and applying knowledge, whatever its source.
In principle they are omnivorous and opportunistic, taking and
using information from any source that is able to provide it. In
practice, of course, they have developed a variety of means for
collecting and screening the flood of information that would
otherwise inundate them. Indeed, successful engineers realize there
is always a danger that useful channels of information will be
closed off, as occurs when the well-known "not invented here"
mentality becomes dominant. To understand how engineers function,
one therefore must pay attention to the knowledge resources they
draw on as well as the methods they employ.
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The image of the engineer as an applier of scientific knowledge
is in reality dated and quite inappropriate as a characterization
of contemporary practice. In the nineteenth century it was thought
that the relationships of science, engineering, and society could
be captured in a rather simple formula, a crass but representative
version of which served as the motto for the Century of Progress
World's Fair held in Chicago in 1933: Science Finds, Industry
Applies, Man Conforms. But this invocation of a well-worn slogan
was at least a generation out of date, for with the rise of the
science-based industries at the end of the nineteenth century, most
notably the chemical and electrical industries, the relationship
between science and engineering became much more complex than it
had been. Rather than simply applying the discoveries of science,
engineers increasingly had to design and carry out research
programs of their own to generate the knowledge of substances and
processes that they needed to solve the problems they faced. In the
twentieth century, science and technology relate more through
interpenetration than through sequential application, but we have
not yet developed an understanding of this relationship that will
allow us finally to dispense with the slogan that our predecessors
found so uplifting.
The realization that in the future engineers would have to
generate much of the knowledge they would need naturally brought
about a far-ranging examination of the ways in which young men were
trained for careers in engineering. The focus of this particular
debate has been the issue of creativity. As Michal McMahon has
noted, throughout the twentieth century prominent engineering
educators have been particularly concerned about sustaining the
leading edge or creative sector of engineering. This concern has
occupied a central place in the many reports they have produced and
remains an issue today.
What is creative engineering? The human capacity to be creative
is certainly not something that is entirely the product of formal
education, although it can be encouraged or discouraged by the
attitudes of teachers and the ideologies of institutions. Thus,
within engineering the issue of creativity becomes one of
determining what sorts of engineering activities are considered to
be of greatest importance and what means are most likely to promote
their pursuit. Given the diversity within engineering as a whole,
there is no reason to think that any single set of goals or
activities will command general assent as being of preeminent
importance. And since the word "creative" is a term of high praise
in our culture, every active engineer will seek to characterize his
work toward the goals he seeks to realize as creative. But we
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should not avoid the debate over creativity in engineering just
because it has a strong tendency to evoke self-serving rhetoric.
The issue is too important to ignore, especially because it leads
directly into an examination of some of the most important
disagreements over values within engineering.
In the present century the debate among engineering educators
over creativity has pivoted on the issue of how much and what kind
of instruction in scientific subjects should be required of
engineering students. Rather than dividing over whether or not
engineering students should study science extensively, for all
parties agreed they should, the participants in this debate have
differed on whether the values of science, and the kinds of
knowledge produced under their guidance, are appropriate and
fruitful values for engineering. Dugald Jackson, who developed the
first cooperative training program in 1907 while serving as head of
the electrical engineering department at MIT, believed that the
primary responsibility of engineering educators was to prepare
their students to serve industry and advance to managerial
positions. A thorough grounding in science was needed, but Jackson
did not believe that the disinterested and noncommercial values of
science were appropriate for engineering and he valued managerial
effectiveness over technical creativity. Charles Steinmetz, the
legendary General Electric research engineer and a founder and
president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers,
opposed Jackson's philosophy of engineering education. He believed
the success of modern engineering was a consequence of the progress
of empirical science and he was appalled by the degree to which
engineering schools continued to stress the acquisition of
information rather than the mastery of modern methods of scientific
investigation. He argued that while in college, engineering
students should study the scientific foundations of engineering and
the humanities, leaving until their entry into industry such
training in technical practice as they might need. For Steinmetz,
the promotion of creativity was the proper goal of education and
for engineers the study of basic science was its means.
A generation after Jackson and Steinmetz debated the issue of
creativity, William Wickenden again raised Steinmetz's banner in
his justly famous 1929 report on engineering education. As McMahon
reports, Wickenden concluded that the engineering colleges were so
burdened by having to train legions of engineers for the ordinary
supervisory and commercial needs of industry that they were largely
unfit to train students for the research activities that are also a
vital part of engineering. A quarter century after Wickenden's
report, Frederick Terman, reflecting on his wartime service as head
of the Radar Countermeasures
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Laboratory of the Office of Scientific Research and Development,
again raised the question Steinmetz had addressed. An engineer
himself, Terman concluded that the war had demonstrated the
inadequacy of the training engineers received, since most of the
major advances in electronics had been made by physicists. Unlike
the engineers, the physicists had mastered the basic fundamentals
of science while acquiring their advanced degrees, and they were
quickly converted into extremely good engineers. The engineers he
worked with, while they had functioned extremely well in some
capacities, had shown little creativity.
Reflecting on the engineering method, the relationship between
science and engineering and the role of creativity in engineering
help clarify certain aspects of the overall enterprise called
engineering. But consideration of these issues also reveals that no
one of them, nor even all of them taken together, provides a basis
for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of engineering.
Being an engineer involves the use of certain methods and the
utilization of certain kinds of knowledge, but it also involves
forms of professional association and social practice that cannot
be seen as simply derived from its knowledge base. It is to the
examination of these other aspects of engineering that we must now
turn.
Engineering as a Profession
Engineers have long aspired to the dignity associated with being
professional and there can be no doubt that today engineering is
one of the largest and most prominent of the professions. What is
in doubt is exactly how one should characterize the profession of
engineering. One approach is to measure it against the standards of
independence, collegiality, and ethical concern that have long been
the guiding principles of the older professions of the ministry,
the law, and medicine. Another approach is to describe carefully
the actual concerns and practices of professional engineers and
take these as defining. In fact, both the normative and descriptive
approaches are needed, for the powerful urge to professionalize
engineering has been motivated both by a desire to elevate the
status of the engineer within the larger society and by a
commitment to serve the functional needs of engineers as their
numbers and specializations have multiplied. These two motivations
have created a vitalizing tension within the profession of
engineering, a tension that was evident when the first engineering
societies were founded and is still present in the profession
today.
James Brittain has suggested that one way to step back from
the
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power system is not supported by the evidence of history. If the
fluctuations of the system were predictable, these specialty
subsystems well might establish an internal equilibrium, for they
are strongly inclined in this direction. But in fact the demand for
engineers, both in the aggregate and within separate specialties,
is affected by so many factors, and the lag time involved in
recruiting and training new specialists is so long, that in times
of crises a considerable cross-flow between specialties is evident
even in mature fields. For instance, in the area of petroleum
engineering the 1973 oil embargo, an event that certainly evaded
prediction, created a decade-long sharp increase in the demand for
petroleum engineers. While this heightened demand led to increased
enrollments in degree programs in petroleum engineering, it was
satisfied in the short run primarily by an influx of engineers who
moved into petroleum engineering from related areas in science and
technology. The resilience of the overall engineering manpower
system was again demonstrated, and it seems reasonable to attribute
that resilience at least in part to the openness of the specialty
subsystems of which it is composed.
Alex Roland has drawn similar conclusions from his study of
NASA's Apollo program. Driven by a fear of military vulnerability
and a desire to demonstrate national power, the lunar-landing
program involved engineering on a national scale and threatened to
create intense stresses in the engineering manpower system. This
threat was relieved in part by certain organizational choices made
within NASA. Rather than developing the Apollo program on the Army
arsenal model, in which almost all the engineering work is done
in-house, NASA adopted the Air Force contracting system and
consistently spent 90 to 95 percent of its budget on contracts with
industrial suppliers of products and services. Having made this
choice, NASA then hired a cadre of its own engineers to plan,
supervise, and coordinate its contracts and operations. The
engineers hired by NASA came from a variety of specialties, again
illustrating the predominance of cross-flow in periods of high
demand, and many of its engineers and managers were detailed to
NASA from the military services. As a result, NASA never suffered
from a shortage of qualified engineers. Although Roland has not
studied the flow of engineering manpower in the corporations that
contracted with NASA, his impression, shared by others familiar
with this story, is that there, too, cross-flow between specialties
was the key to meeting the sudden increase in demand for aerospace
engineers.
The sudden expansion of NASA associated with the Apollo program
was followed by an equally unanticipated sudden decline. NASA
managers, seduced by the technical sweetness of the devices they
were
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creating and lulled into believing there was a boundless
national commitment to the exploration of space, planned for
continued high levels of growth within the agency, but as early as
1963, long before the first lunar landing in 1969, political
support for post-Apollo projects had begun to wane. Since 1965
NASA's budget has been steadily declining and it is now less than
the military space budget. While this retreat from the space
frontier has received a great deal of highly charged publicity, it
appears that during the period of decline the engineers in NASA and
in the corporations with which it has contracted have either
successfully returned to the jobs they held before the Apollo
program or have taken the experience they gained while on that
project and applied it elsewhere. Thus while both the expansion and
contraction of the Apollo program had the potential for creating a
crisis in the engineering manpower system, that system in fact
exhibited a surprising degree of resilience in responding to the
stresses placed upon it.
The realization that the engineering manpower system possesses a
high degree of resilience has important implications for
engineering education. Because we are incapable of predicting with
a useful degree of accuracy future shifts in the demand for
engineers, and because the response times of universities are so
slow in comparison with those of the marketplace for engineering
labor, attempts to tie the content of engineering education closely
to the needs of industry have been of little use in anticipating or
responding to short-term stresses in the engineering manpower
system. Indeed, attempts to forge a tight link between engineering
curricula and specific employment opportunities have probably done
more harm than good from the point of view of individual
flexibility and the resilience of the system, for they have
emphasized specialization at an early stage of education and have
thereby reduced the breadth of understanding that in fact
facilitates movement between specialties.
The character of the engineering research carried on in
universities appears to have a considerable bearing on the
flexibility of the engineers trained within them. The most
effective link between college- and university-based engineers and
the markets served by engineers appears to lie in the realm of
research. While it is relatively easy to insure that research and
development activities carried on within a corporation are market
responsive, such is not the case in universities. When given the
choice, university-based engineers, like their counterparts in
science, are more apt to pursue technically sweet projects than
those that are primarily of economic value, and this preference can
powerfully influence the values of those studying in such
institutions. But since practically all university research in
science and engineering
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now requires some form of outside sponsorship, research on
economically useful projects will receive more attention when the
number of technically sweet projects is limited. Such is the case
at present, and there is reason to think that the next generation
of engineers will be somewhat more attuned to the marketplace than
the generation that received their degrees during the decades in
which government projects dominated university-based research.
Charles Schaffner made this point most emphatically when he
said:
The engineering curricula of today, the products
of the engineering schools, the growth of the faculty and of
faculty types, and the directions and everything that was created
following World War II, all stem directly from federal government
decisions in terms of first, defense, and second, NASA. These
programs drenched the engineering schools with research money and
pushed them in a direction that had nothing to do, in essence, with
the business of the citizenry other than its defense.
Eugene Merchant has concurred with this assessment, saying that
"the Apollo program really finished off what the heavy Department
of Defense support for research in universities started, namely,
turning university engineering research and education away from an
orientation towards civilian industry." One consequence of this
emphasis, as Aaron Gellman has pointed out, was to decouple the
very concept of engineering from normal markets. But as Gellman has
also noted, times have changed and now all engineers, including
those located in universities, must pay much more attention to the
appropriability of their research, for that is what will determine
its value in the current market for technological innovation.
Engineering in Society
Engineering is a go-ahead profession, much more given to problem
solving than self-reflection. And yet, as the contexts within which
engineers operate become more complex and as the interactions
between society and engineering become more intricate and
constraining, it becomes increasingly important that engineers have
a clear understanding of their profession and the ways in which it
is connected to the larger society of which it is a part. In an
earlier era, when the practice of engineering was largely an
autonomous activity, one could afford to defer such reflections
until retirement or bash them out on short notice when called upon
to address an audience eager to celebrate the achievements of the
profession. But today the absence of a carefully
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documented and fully reasoned justification for positions taken
creates a vulnerability that may result in real harm, especially in
the competition for good students and research support, and at the
very least reflects badly on the profession. This is both
unfortunate and unnecessary, for the case for the importance of
engineering, when well presented, is quite compelling.
The critical examination and reconceptualization of one's
collective identity is a demanding task, one that only those who
believe in themselves can successfully complete. But engineers are
particularly well situated in this regard, for what other
profession is of comparable importance in contemporary society?
What is called for then is not a defense of the legitimacy of
engineering, and certainly not a public-relations style puffing of
its achievements, but rather a patient, evidentially grounded
examination of the ways in which engineering functions in
contemporary society. The key here is to see engineering as a
distinct activity in society, not as an autonomous enterprise that
on occasion acknowledges its tenuous connections to society. In
recent years the profession of medicine has been subjected to a
detailed and sometimes painful demythologizing, one consequence
being that today it is widely recognized that medicine is a
technical enterprise conducted under strong social constraints and
having important social consequences. Engineering is in many ways
like medicine, and while it may be able to avoid the more extreme
forms of criticism that have been directed at physicians and their
organizations, it will in time come to be understood primarily in
terms of its functional role in society. Humanists and social
scientists who study technology and engineering have already made a
beginning in this direction, but to date their efforts have had
little impact within engineering itself. In any case, primary
responsibility for this effort must remain with the engineers, for
it is their self-perception and public image that are at stake.
The dangers of leaving the public interpretation of engineering
entirely to others is nicely illustrated by the relationship
between the contemporary aesthetic doctrine of postmodernism and
engineering, a relationship that Thomas Hughes has reflected on at
some length. Postmodernism is a reaction to the twentieth-century
cultural style called modernism, a style that since its formulation
early in the twentieth century has profoundly influenced all
aspects of design from the sculpting of furniture to the planning
of cities. The early modernists seized on what they took to be the
defining feature of engineering, namely, its efficient use of
materials and energy, and declared this to be the fundamental
principle of modern aesthetics as well. Modernist
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architects insisted that less is more, that is to say that
beautiful objects are made with a minimum of material and a
simplicity of design, and that form follows function. Engineers
could not help but find such a doctrine appealing, for it not only
honors design values central to engineering, it elevates those
values to the level of high art. Indeed, what could be more
flattering to engineers than to have designers, and especially
architects, treat them not merely as producers of goods but rather
as creators of profoundly humane and beautiful objects. They thus
had little reason to criticize the public identification of
modernism and engineering, even though if pressed most engineers
would have admitted that the doctrines of modernism focus on only
one aspect of their profession.
Postmodernists, as Hughes points out, stand in complete
opposition to what they consider the sterility of modernism.
Unwilling to accept what they see as the diminishing constraints of
the modernist movement, the postmodernists. reject the primacy of
material efficiency in favor of a more varied and accommodating
aesthetic. Robert Venturi, the earliest and most articulate of the
postmodernists, asserts that ''less is not more, less is a bore.''
He rejects the image of the architect-engineer as a heroic builder
and dismisses Le Corbusier's proposal for leveling Paris to clear
the ground for a new Cartesian city by saying that architecture
"must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy
unity of exclusion." Instead of geometric fortresses unencumbered
by suburbs, Venturi favors "messy vitality."
Why should engineers be concerned with this debate? At the very
least they should be aware that many people outside their
profession, and especially those concerned with questions of
design, creativity and art, see the modernist/postmodernist debate
as, among other things, an examination of the place of engineering
in modern society. In this debate the modernists have been allowed
to define what engineering is and, as we have seen, their
definition is at best a partial one. It ignores the vital linkage
between engineering values and market values that has been
characteristic of engineering practice throughout this century. Had
this linkage been recognized, the "postmodernist" automobiles
created by Sloan's designers to realize the strategy of the annual
model change would be seen to be just as much a product of modern
engineering as was Ford's Model T. As things now stand, however,
the postmodernists see no reason not to accept the modernist's
identification of their doctrines with the essence of engineering,
and engineers feel they have been treated unfairly when told they
don't know how to deal with messy vitality. If they wish to prevent
such misrepresentations and
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misunderstandings in the future, engineers ought to be more
attentive to the ways in which their profession is presented to the
public at large.
What it means to be a professional engineer also needs to be
reconceptualized. Living as we do in the age of mass
professionalism, in which nearly every occupation has been
transformed, at least in name, into a profession, simply asserting
that one is a professional is not very informative. Being a
professional no longer entails sharing a common culture, since
today cultural preferences and practices are largely matters of
personal choice. Nor does it signify, in any discriminating sense,
being educated, for today nearly half those of college age are
enrolled in degree programs of one sort or another. Had
professional societies been more vigorous in exercising
self-discipline, the concept of professional behavior might be more
meaningful than it is today, but such has not been the case. And
had colleges and universities been as concerned with the economic
health of the professions as they have been with their own
expansion, we might be able to say that a professional is someone
who enjoys the advantages associated with limited access to
privileged status. The compromising of these older meanings of the
concept of profession does not, of course, render meaningless the
engineer's striving for professionalism. But the nature of the goal
sought needs to be redefined in ways that are informative both to
engineers and to those who worry about how the profession of
engineering serves society at large.
The ultimate goal of all such reconceptualizations is to develop
within the community of engineers an increased ability to perceive,
describe, and manage the diversity of modern engineering and the
ways it changes in time. Engineering is a dynamic enterprise, both
internally and in its relations with other aspects of society. As
new specialties emerge, new attitudes toward work and management
appear, new techniques of design and production are developed, and
new expectations gain in importance, engineers need to be able to
understand the forces that bring about these changes and the ways
in which they can be integrated into existing patterns of thought
and behavior. By knowing themselves better, engineers will be
better able to serve their profession and its larger purposes
successfully.
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Conclusions and Recommendations
The Resilience of the Engineering
Manpower System
Conclusions
1. Examination of previous crises in the engineering manpower
system suggests that it has responded adequately and that calls for
a radical expansion or reconstruction of existing arrangements for
educating engineers cannot be justified by appeals to past
experience.
2. Engineers have in the aggregate adapted rapidly and
successfully to sudden changes in the demand for particular
engineering specialties. Their ability to do so is directly
dependent upon their mastery of the fundamentals of design and
their knowledge of the underlying mathematics and science.
Recommendations
1. The technical/scientific content of the undergraduate
engineering curriculum should emphasize science, mathematics, and
engineering design. Technical courses focusing on problems
associated with particular engineering specialties should occupy a
secondary position in all engineering curricula.
2. When introducing new technologies that render obsolete the
knowledge and skills of engineers already employed, companies have
an obligation to provide these engineers with educational
opportunities that will enable them to remain productive. The
continuing education programs offered by many colleges and
universities may be helpful in this regard.
The Conceptualization and Presentation
of Engineering
Conclusions
1. The ways in which engineering is presented to and understood
by the general public is a matter of vital concern to
engineers.
2. The nature of engineering can only be understood in a
comprehensive manner if its many links to other sectors of society
are described and analyzed in a detailed and careful way.
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Recommendations
1. The social/humanistic component of the engineering curriculum
should concentrate on issues and subjects of direct concern to
engineers and interpret them by using the insights and analytic
techniques of the social sciences and humanities. Courses such as
the History of Technology, Ethics for Engineers, and Engineering
and Public Policy offer valuable means for ensuring that
engineering students will gain some understanding of the complex
contexts of contemporary engineering.
2. Engineers, with the help of historians, philosophers, and
other humanists and social scientists, should organize and
encourage scholarly studies and public presentations designed to
explicate the nature of engineering in all its many different
forms. Studies of the interactions between engineering and other
sectors of modern society and culture should be especially
encouraged.
Acknowledgments
This report is an attempt to weave together and draw appropriate
lessons from the historical papers and comments presented at a
three-day conference sponsored by the National Research Council.
The author is grateful to all those who prepared the thematic and
case studies that occasioned lively discussion at the conference
and provide the substantive content of this report. While the
report draws heavily upon the proceedings of the conference, it
does not attempt to provide an exact summary of what took place at
that meeting, and the conference participants are in no way
responsible for either the general conclusions and recommendations
of this report or such errors as have been introduced during its
preparation. The author is also extremely grateful to those
individuals who took the trouble to review an earlier draft of this
report, and especially to Melvin Kranzberg, Samuel Florman,
Courtland Lewis, and Edwin Layton. Their constructive suggestions
have improved the report at many points, while such errors and
misjudgments as it still contains remain solely the responsibility
of the author. Finally, the author would like to thank the staff
and members of the Committee on the Education and Utilization of
the Engineer, and especially George Ansell, for giving him the
opportunity to participate in and contribute to their activities.
It has been a valuable and much appreciated experience, and a most
unusual one for an historian.
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Participants, Conference on
Engineering Interactions With Society
Presenters
James E. Brittain, School of Social
Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Engineering in
Industrial Research and Development"
P. Thomas Carroll, Division of
Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
"Orphaned Innovations: The Development of Large-Scale Solid Rocket
Boosters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory"
Edward W. Constant II, Department
of History, Carnegie Mellon University, "Technological Knowledge
about Engineering Manpower: Some Preliminary Considerations"
Eugene Ferguson, University of
Delaware and Hagley Museum, Panelist
Samuel Florman, Kreisler, Borg,
Florman Construction Company, New York, Panelist
Robert Friedel, IEEE Center for the
History of Electrical Engineering, "Engineers and the Micro
Revolution: The Emergence and Impact of Solid-State
Electronics"
James Hansen, Historian for NASA,
Langley Research Center, "The Revolt against Max Munk at Langley
Aeronautical Laboratory: A Case Study of the Fate of an Eccentric
in an American Engineering Community"
David A. Hounshell, Curator of
Technology, Hagley Museum, and Department of History, University of
Delaware, "Redesigning Production Engineering: Mass Production and
the Model Change"
Thomas P. Hughes, Department of
History and Sociology of Science, Technology and Medicine,
University of Pennsylvania, Panelist
Melvin Kranzberg, Callaway
Professor of the History of Technology, Georgia Institute of
Technology, "Engineering Education and Sociotechnical Needs:
Reaction and Interaction"
Larry Lankton, Department of
Science, Technology and Society, Michigan Technological University,
"The Social Side of Early American Engineering"
Stuart W. Leslie, Mellon Scholar in
the History of Science, Johns Hopkins University, "Industrial
Research and Product Development at General Motors"
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
engineering manpower
Page 131
Michal McMahon, Historical
Consultant and Department of Humanities and Communication, Drexel
University, "Engineering Education as 'Best Practice': Historical
Reflections on the Crisis"
Nathan Reingold, Editor, Joseph
Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution, "Vannevar Bush, Applied
Mathematics, and the Nature of Engineering"
Martin Reuss, Civil Works
Historian, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "Politics, Technology and
the Development of Hydraulic Engineering: The Influence of Andrew
A. Humphreys"
Alex Roland, Department of History,
Duke University, "The Race to the Moon: The Experience at NASA"
Jeffrey L. Sturchio, Department of
Humanities, New Jersey Institute of Technology, "Crisis in
Industrial Chemistry: Synthetic Organic Chemicals and World War
I"
Neil Wasserman, Research Associate,
Harvard Business School, "The Development of an Engineering
Organization at AT&T"
Committee Members*
George S. Ansell, Dean of
Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Chairman, Panel
on Engineering Interactions With Society
Jordan J. Baruch, President, Baruch
Associates, Washington, D.C.
Erich Bloch, Vice-President,
Technical Personnel Development, IBM Corporation
Dennis Chamot, Assistant Director,
Department of Professional Employees, AFL-CIO
Aaron J. Gellman, President,
Gellman Research Associates, Inc., Johnstown, Pa.
Helen Gouldner, Professor of
Sociology and Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of
Delaware
Jerrier A. Haddad, Chairman and
Study Director, Committee on the Education and Utilization of the
Engineer
Lawrence M. Mead, Jr., Senior
Management Consultant, Grumman Aerospace Corporation
M. Eugene Merchant, Principal
Scientist, Manufacturing Research, Cincinnati Milacron, Inc.
Robert M. Saunders, Acting Dean,
School of Engineering, University of California, Irvine
*Titles and
affiliations are as of the time of the conference.
Page 132
Charles E. Schaffner, Executive
Vice-President, Syska and Hennessey, New York, N.Y.
Judith A. Schwan, Assistant
Director, Research Laboratories, Eastman Kodak, Inc.
Donald G. Weinert, Executive
Director, National Society of Professional Engineers
Other
Arthur L. Donovan, Director, Center
for the Study of Science in Society, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University, Conference Chairman and Rapporteur
Gary L. Downey, Assistant Professor
of Science and Technology Studies, Center for the Study of Science
in Society, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Lewis G. (Pete) Mayfield, Head,
Office of Interdisciplinary Research, National Science
Foundation
William H. Michael, Jr., Executive
Director, Committee on the Education and Utilization of the
Engineer
Vernon H. Miles, Assistant
Director, Committee on the Education and Utilization of the
Engineer
Herbert H. Richardson, Head,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Steve Tucker, Program Manager,
Edison Engineering Program, General Electric
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