Summary Notes on The Civilized Engineer, by S. C. Florman, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1987, 258 pages.

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 12/20/00

"Nowadays engineering education is much more 'scientific' than it used to be. In addition to the subjects that were taught in the 1940's, a contemporary curriculum will include computing and information processing, probability and statistics, systems, optimization, and control theory, even system dynamics (policy simulation). Much of the so-called 'shop work' has fallen by the wayside, relegated to students who take two-year technician courses or four-year engineering technology programs. … This has been inevitable, appropriate, and a darned shame."

"… When older engineers get together they invariably agree that immediately after graduating from college they wished they had taken more technical courses. Ten years later, advancing along career paths, they wished they had learned more about business and economics. Ten years again, in their forties, thinking about the nature of leadership and musing about the meaning of life, they regretted not having studied literature, history, and philosophy. …"

"… As engineers, we feel an urge to challenge nature - fighting storms, floods, earthquakes, and other life-threatening forces - yet also to work in harmony with nature, seeking understanding of soils, metals, and other materials of the earth. … Our work contributes to the well-being of our fellow humans. There are religious implications in technology - a little bit of cathedral in everything we build."

"The rise of the computer has added to the problem. The phrase 'hands on,' which has an honored place in engineering tradition and used to refer to gasoline engines, electric motors, and concrete testing machines, now means running one's fingers over a keyboard and looking at numbers on a glowing screen. … Happily, the loss of 'earthiness' is somewhat offset by the enthusiasm of many young computer experts. What I really deplore is the waning of enthusiasm among would-be engineers, and the growth of cool, calculating self- interest."

"… We know that engineering reasoning consists of induction (observing, and drawing conclusions from one's perceptions) and deduction (logical reasoning from one general principle to another). Add to this a touch of what one might call inspiration and the basic recipe is complete. … The wedding of science and engineering was eventually sanctified, though traces of the stormy courtship persist. There are those today who see technological advance in terms of scientific genius, as if engineering were simply the gross application of sublime theory. At the other extreme are the vociferous supporters of hands-on ingenuity. … Aircraft, rocketry, turbines, and semi-conductors are just a few of the many fields in which engineering has led and science has followed. … In many ways the American engineering profession today is riding high. … Engineering stands in the turbulent center of democratic life, thriving on variety, vital in the midst of paradox. If the past is indeed prologue to the future … there is ample reason to hope for the coming of ever more accomplished engineers, indeed for the coming of another engineering renaissance the nature of which we can as yet only dimly envision."

"… Engineering work involves logic and precision. … We can certainly hope that our seriousness will be of good quality, that we will be earnest without being morose, sober without becoming glum. … Although engineering is serious and methodical, it contains elements of spontaneity. Engineering is an art as well as a science, and good engineering depends upon leaps of imagination as well as painstaking care. Creativity and ingenuity, the playfulness of original ideas - these are also a part of the engineering view."

"… Most of the engineers I know are good people but truly no more altruistic than the average citizen, and I feel it is somewhat deceptive for us to imply that this is not the case. … By being hard-working, responsible, dependable, and creative we end up being of service to the community, as well as enhancing our own pride and pleasure. … The engineering view is far from the only acceptable way of perceiving the world, and I hope that engineers will be receptive to various types of experience - including the literary, artistic, and political. …"

"Engineering societies have traditionally treated questions of professional obligation under the rubric of 'engineering ethics.' … I consider the subject interesting and important, but the heated feelings it evokes fill me with trepidation. … The real questions remain: What is the public interest, and how is it to be served? … A generalized commitment to do good is worthy; it sets our sights high and puts us in a constructive frame of mind. But too often sermons, codes, and pledges go hand in hand with wrong-doing. … Engineering ethics cannot paper over deep and heartfelt differences of opinion. Inevitably, people of opposing views will each hold high the banner of professional morality, much as opposing armies used to claim that God was on their side. … In engineering it is often the process rather than the product that captures our interest. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of engineering ethics."

"… A time-honored way to approach a problem in engineering … is by process of elimination. What if we were to apply this method to engineering ethics? … We all want safety, reliability, and undamaged environment, and undepleted resources. We also want economy … By what mechanism would corporations and engineers decide on the many tradeoffs that must be made, and why should the basic decisions that affect our lives be left to an unelected unrepresentative group? … Finally, I suggest that engineering ethics is not … a medium for expressing one's personal opinions about life. … Engineers do not have the responsibility, much less the right, to establish goals for society. Although they have an obligation to lead, … they have even greater obligation to serve. … If we relate engineering ethics to protection of the public interest, then clearly diligence is more moral than conventional 'morality.' A kindly, generous, well-intentioned, even saintly engineer may still be an inept engineer… Engineering ethics is not the same as conventional ethics. In technical work, competence is more good than 'goodness.' …"

"Teachers of engineering transmit the profession's heritage from one generation to the next, frequently with enthusiasm, skill, and flair. Engineers in public interest organizations play an increasingly important role and are able to bring much needed facts and logic to debates that are needlessly acrimonious. … Finally, the engineers who have made their careers in public works are the unsung heroes of a little known but glorious saga. How the teeming, putrefying, corrupt cities of nineteenth-century America were turned into the functioning metropolises of today is a tale waiting for its master historian. We take it so for granted… But it took many brilliant, tenacious, visionary engineers to make it all work, and continue to work, every incredible crisis-filled day. …"

"Learning is whatever can be acquired by systematic study, and a little of that … can indeed 'intoxicate the brain.' Knowledge in the broad sense … implies understanding, discernment, and judgment, and no amount of this … can be a dangerous thing. A knowledgeable public will not expect to resolve each technical issue by analyzing evidence, but will seek to establish a fruitful relationship with experts… Educators and science journalists will have to seek new ways to responsibly assist in the complex process of decision-making."

"It is ironic that while public facilities are literally crumbling about us, the future of science and technology should still be seen in terms of glittering novelty. … One of the key arguments of those who decry present government policy is that future economic expansion will be inhibited by a deteriorated transportation network. The situation is made worse by the fact that new technological create unforeseen maintenance problems almost from the moment they are introduced. … In science and engineering a host of new challenges are seen to exist. … In facing up to the infrastructure crisis we will have to temper our futuristic zeal with a stolid sense of reality. …"

"No right-thinking person will wish for casualties in order to make a point… But there is no denying that in the absence of outrage many things are ignored that ought not to ignored, and nothing produces outrage as readily as large numbers of simultaneous, accidental civilian deaths. … There will always be engineering failures. But the worst kind of failures, the most inexcusable, are those that could readily be prevented if only people stayed alert and took reasonable precautions. … Engineers, being human, are also susceptible to the drowsiness that comes in the absence of crisis. … Engineering responsibility should not require the simulation that comes in the wake of catastrophe."

"Much has been written in recent years about risk analysis… Responsible experts in the field … consistently warn that risk assessment is a delicate tool that needs to be applied sparingly, not a machete to be flailed against the supposedly overgrown regulatory jungle. … Add to this the judicious … use of risk analysis and we have the basis for that 'collegial judgment' upon which the regulatory process should properly be founded."

"We discovered anew that in complex engineering systems the possibilities of failure are compounded by a multiplicity of potential coincidences. … The implication that engineering consists of precise calculation while 'judgement' is left to another class of persons is inaccurate; further, it is demeaning to a profession that has always stressed art, imagination, and wisdom at least as much as exactitude. There are … many instances in which engineering facts can and should be isolated from business or political choices, but the Challenger launch was not one of these. … Fourteen engineers at Thiokol recommended a postponement. Incredibly, for the top executive-engineers at Thiokol, pressured by administrator-engineers at NASA, ignored the warnings and agreed to proceed. This was bad engineering as well as bad management."

"In its development, the American engineering profession has drawn upon two competing yet complementary traditions: the hands-on, muddy-boots pragmatism inherited from Britain and the elite, science-oriented approach of the French polytechnique. … The increasing technical content of even the most elemental engineering education has inevitably changed the nature of that education, forcing out peripheral concerns and all but eliminating the liberal arts that once were the heart of the college experience. Inescapably, engineers have become less broadly educated, less wide-ranging in their background and interests - in a word, less 'cultured.' Engineering education in America came into being as undergraduate education, and its basic degree has always been the four-year bachelor of science. …"

"… There does not appear to be any correlation between morality and book learning. … Society is well served and can ill afford to spend more time or resources on getting the engineers it so desperately needs. … Nevertheless, there are widespread feelings that something is amiss. Even if the system does 'work,' and even if most engineers and employers of engineers see little reason to change, a large and vocal minority is not at all satisfied. … In recent years, two things have happened to give such misgivings added urgency. The first is practical and relates to the need for engineers to be able to 'communicate' in order to be effective. … The other source of heightened interest in liberal arts for engineers is the fear and suspicion of technology which emerged with the development of nuclear weapons, and intensified in the wake of the environmental crisis of the 1970's. … I am nevertheless convinced that the quality of our technology, and consequently the quality of our lives, would be improved by the liberal enrichment of engineering education, by the broadening of horizons, the deepening of cultural awareness - in short, by the civilizing - of engineers."

"Descending from the level of long-term vision to that of short-term survival, I suggest that liberal education for engineering would bring members of the profession into leadership roles from which they are presently excluded, and that this, in turn, would bring significant economic and political benefits. … The leader of our society are almost exclusively men and women who have received a liberal arts college education. … For it is liberal education that transmits tradition, history, ideas, broad understanding of the world - the shared knowledge and values that bind us together as a society. … Also important for the well-being of society is the role that engineers can play in vitalizing and transmitting our cultural heritage. … As for engineers who are concerned about the social status of their profession, liberalized education certainly is a cause worth championing. …"

"Engineering education did not grow out of the apprenticeship system, but rather in competition with it. … Since academic engineering education was from the beginning undergraduate education, the idea of getting a college degree before going to professional school never took hold. … From its earliest days, ABET's predecessor, ECPD, was occupied with curricular battles over science versus hand-on engineering, research versus practice, theory versus design, and specialization versus basics, and so had little time and energy to devote to liberal arts. … Liberal education is not something that any thinking person is likely to be against. The key problem is how much of it can and should be offered to students whose careers require them to learn tremendous amounts of purely technical material. …"

"First, of course, must come the ability to handle the English language. … And just as it is important for children to learn the ABCs of knowledge, so it is vital for college-educated citizens to delve deeper, to learn more of the cultural alphabet. … Properly taught, the humanities bring together the perennial questions of human life with the greatest works of history, literature, philosophy, and art. … It seems to me that anyone who would call himself college educated … should spend some time in close communication with the great souls, the great thinkers, the great artists, of our civilization. …"

"Liberal enrichment of the four-year curriculum, no matter how well conceived, is not likely to satisfy proponents of a five-year engineering degree. … The B.A. plus a B.S. in engineering is not adequate recognition for an engineer who has received a full-fledged liberal education. This truth is not presently recognized at ABET nor will it be until a number of respected institutions devise programs that are worth championing and can muster adequate political support. … The profession should acknowledge that a spectrum exists, ranging from solid, useful, technically adept engineers at one end to socially involved, culturally sensitized engineers at the other. …"

"The engineering elite of the future will most likely be gradates of liberally enriched five- or six-year programs. But the length of time spent in school is not as important as the quality of that time. … What we are considering is an awakening of mind and spirit."

[Readers who are interested in these quotes are encouraged to read the original book in its entirety. Other summary notes on faculty reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]