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ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 129 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.
