Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 124 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
ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 125 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
ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 126 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
ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 127 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.
