Abstract
This article attempts to distinguish between science and technology, on the one hand, and engineering, on the other, offering a brief introduction to engineering values and engineering ethics. The method is (roughly) a philosophical examination of history. Engineering turns out to be a relatively recent enterprise, barely three hundred years old, to have distinctive commitments both technical and moral, and to have changed a good deal both technically and morally during that period. What motivates the paper is the belief that a too-easy equation of engineering with technology tends to obscure the special contribution of engineers to technology and to their own professional standards and so, to obscure as well both the origin and content of engineering ethics.
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Notes and references
See, especially, Paolo Rossi,Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early Modern Era, trans. S. Attanasio (Harper and Row: New York, 1970. TheOxford English Dictionary gives the first known use of the word “technology” in English as 1615.
David Noble suggests that Jacob Bigelow, a Boston physician who helped to found the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1865), was “instrumental” in introducing “technology” into general usage (in its modern sense). To establish this, Noble offers this quotation from Bigelow’sElements of Technology (1829): “There has probably never been an age in which the practical applications of science have employed so large a portion of talent and enterprise of the community, as in the present. To embody...the various topics which belong to such an undertaking, I have adopted the general name of Technology, a word sufficiently expressive, which is found in some of the older dictionaries, and is beginning to be revived in the literature of practical men at the present day. Under this title is attempted to include an account...of the principles, processes, and nomenclatures of the more conspicuous arts, particularly those which involve the application of science, and which may be considered useful, by promoting the benefit of society, together with the emoluments of those who pursue them.” David Noble,America by Design (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1977), pp. 3–4. My reading of this passage does not agree with Noble’s. Bigelow refers to a revival of the term already beginning; hence, by his own admission, he probably is not “instrumental” in its revival. Further, Bigelow’s own use of the term is barely distinguishable from that found in the old dictionaries he refers to. The chief difference is the observation thatsome of the more “conspicuous arts” he will describe “involve the application of science”. He still seems pretty far from the modern idea of technology as either inventions or the “science of invention”.
See, for example, Plato’sTheaetetus (III: 172–173): “[A] philosopher is a gentleman, but a lawyer is a servant. The one can have his talk out, and wander at will from one subject to another, as the fancy takes him...[but] the lawyer is always in a hurry...”
Hannah Arendt,The Human Condition (Doubleday: Garden City, New York, 1959). p. 323n.
“If we assume that the Middle Ages ended with the fifteenth century, then a simple count of inventions made or adopted by Europeans during the period confirms that it was, as regards technics, more creative than any previous epoch in recorded history.”Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Weiner (Charles Scribner’s Sons, Publisher: New York, 1973), vol. IV, p. 359 (D.S.L. Cardwell, “Technology”). I am, of course, still comparing Greece’s Golden Age with a similar stretch of time during the Dark Ages. Were I to compare the Dark Ages with the Hellenistic Period, I would hedge my claim a bit (and begin to worry about how to count inventions).
See, for example, Spencer Klaw, “The Faustian Bargain”, inThe Social Responsibility of the Scientist, edited by Martin Brown (Free Press: New York, 1971), pp. 3–18.
The modern prejudice against manual labor seems to vary from place to place and time to time. It is, for example, certainly less in the United States today than, say, in France in the nineteenth century. So, for example, it is today hard to imagine the events a French mechanical engineer (or mechanic) of the nineteenth-century recalled. After church, he struck up a conversation with a young woman (with her mother standing by). When she found out that he built steam engines for a living, she shuttered: “What! You work, you are therefore exposed to all the filth that trade includes?” A bit vexed I responded “But yes, miss, and I dare to believe that none is apparent at this moment.” The mother turned her back and the eyes of my beautiful neighbor fell on my well-ground hands, which did not betray me, and she moved away. For her, I was a plague-stricken person.” Quoted from Eda Kranakis, “Social Determinants of Engineering Practice: A Comparative View of France and America in the Nineteenth Century”,Social Studies of Science 19 (February 1989): 5–70, at 13. The whole paper is well worth reading both for the contrast it draws between French and American practice and for the cultural explanation it offers.
World Almanac (World Almanac: New York, 1989), p. 158. This number must, however, be taken only as a rough approximation. The Labor Department (three years later) set the number of engineers at 1,519,000 (Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Statistics, May 1992, p. 64); while the National Science Foundation put the number at 2,849,800 (U.S. Scientists and Engineers: 1988 Estimates, Surveys of Science Resources Series, National Science Foundation, NSF 88-322, p.6).
“Principles of Medical Ethics”, inCodes of Professional Responsibility, edited by Rena A. Gorlin (Bureau of National Affairs: Washington, DC, 1986), p. 99.
The first of these modern professions was the apothecaries, who reorganized in 1815. The other liberal professions followed only slowly, beginning with the solicitors in the 1830s. See, W. J. Reader,Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth-Century England (Basic Books: New York, 1966), especially, pp. 51–55.
Thomas Percival,Medical Ethics; or A Code of Institutes and Precepts Adapted to the Professional Conduct of Physicians and Surgeons (1803). The word “institutes” suggests that Percival’s model here is (in part at least) jurisprudence. (Since the emperor Justinian’s famous textbook, “institutes” has signaled that the book so titled was a textbook or summary of the law, the rest of the title telling the particular jurisdiction, for example, Coke’sInstitutes of the Laws of England.) Percival in fact makes this connection in his introduction, indicating that he originally intended to call his text “medical jurisprudence”. About half the text is a summary of English law a physician should know. Much of the rest consists of “precepts” (that is, advice) rather than of standards of conduct (“ethics” strictly so called). Medical ethics (in the modern sense) is actually a small part of that seminal work.
See, for example, M. David Burghardt,Introduction to the Engineering Profession (HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 1991), p. 26: “We shall assume that wherever there was an invention or innovation, engineering was required.” Burghardt does not say the same about engineers. Can there be engineering without engineers? The same, unfortunately, is true of Billy Vaughn Koen’s generally astuteDefinition of the Engineering Method (American Society of Engineering Education: Washington, DC, 1985). Note, for example, p. 26: “After 20 or 30 centuries, the engineer learned how to correct this problem by allowing the front axle to pivot on a king bolt as stage three in the evolution of cart design.”
See, for example, Ralph J. Smith,Engineering as a Career, 3rd (McGraw-Hill: New York, 1969), p. 22: “It has been said that the history of civilization is the history of engineering. Certainly it is true that the highly developed civilizations have all been noted for their accomplishments in engineering.” Substitute “building” for “engineering” and there would be nothing to object to. The same is true of scholarly works such as Donald Hill,A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times (Croom Helm: London, 1984). A careful researcher and writer, Hill actually argues for his application of “engineer” to ancient builders (rather than just assuming it as most writers do). Yet he soon admits that “classical and medieval engineers did not have a quantified, scientific basis for their designs” (p.5), that they lacked formal training characteristic of modern engineers, and that they even lacked a full-time occupation (p. 7). They did “engineering” (read “building”) as a sideline. So, whatever they were, they were not a profession—or even an occupation.
See, Frederick B. Artz,The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500–1850 (MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966), p. 48; or W.H.G. Armytage’s (misnamed) history of engineering in Britain,A Social History of Engineering (Faber and Faber: London, 1961), pp. 96 and 99.
Artz, 47–48. I should, perhaps, warn that the members of this corps do not seem to have been known as “civil engineers” (ingé nieurs civils) but as “road and bridge engineers”. The French seem to have reserved “civil engineer” for engineers employed by private persons. All members of a corps, whether of thecorps du génie (militaire) or of thecorps des ponts et chaussé es were, of course, state employees. The English term “civil engineer” may have derived from a misunderstanding of the French term, since the English, with a relatively weak state, had no exact counterpart to thecorps des ponts et chaussé es. Compare Kranakis, especially, pp. 29–30.
Engineers also had some secret methods (for example, Monge’s descriptive geometry). Artz, 106.
Artz, 81–86.
But note Peter Michael Molloy’s remark inTechnical Education and the Young Republic: West Point as America’s École Polytechnique (Brown University, Dissertation, 1975), p. 105: “From a description of the curriculum, there should be no mystery for the change in the School’s name in 1795 fromÉcole des Travaux Publics to École Polytechnique.” It remains a mystery to me.
Artz, 154–155.
Artz, 160. I should, perhaps, say “thisÉcole Polytechnique”. By 1830, theÉcole Polytechnique had become so devoted to mathematics that (by American standards of the day) its graduates generally did not practice engineering. This laterÉcole Polytechnique may, then, provide an early example of the ability of science education to crowd out engineering. See Molloy, esp., 119–130. On the other hand, this interpretation may simply be unfair (within the French environment). See Kranakis, esp. pp. 22–29, for reasons to think that theÉcole Polytechnique remained an engineering school throughout the nineteenth century.
Artz, 160–161. I should perhaps add that only practical difficulties seem to have prevented all this from happening as early as 1802. Molloy is very good on this.
Eugene Ferguson, “The Imperatives of Engineering”, in John G. Burke et al.,Connections: Technology and Change (Boyd and Fraser: San Francisco, 1979), 30–31. Ferguson’s “imperatives” are, of course, Koen’s “heuristics”.
For a detailed study of one of these proxy measures that, in the end, had to be discarded, see Walter G. Vincenti’s discussion of “stability”, inWhat Engineers Know and How They Know It (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1990), pp. 51–108.
In the absence of government action, engineering societies have developed codes, both to enhance efficiency (by promoting standardization) and to maintain safety. These both set standards for engineers to follow “voluntarily” and provide “model codes” legislatures could adopt. For more on one of these model codes, Paula Wells, Hardy Jones, and Michael Davis,Conflict of Interest in Engineering (Kendall/Hunt: Dubuque, 1986). Since this standard-setting has been criticized as a usurpation of a governmental function, Ferguson’s complaint that engineers should have done more of it seems unfair—at least until he offers a theory of which activities belong to government and which to private organizations or individuals.
For more on the military connections of engineering, together with the connections between the military and technology, see Barton Hacker’s useful summary, “Engineering a New Order: Military Institutions, Technical Education, and the Rise of the Industrial State”,Technology and Culture 34 (April 1993): 1–27.
Artz, 162.
Compare Koen, esp. 63–65. Koen (rightly) points out that engineers sometimes go beyond science (what we now know) and sometimes ignore science (because the client may not be able to afford scientific accuracy) and so at least part of the time cannot be said to be applying science. This is, I believe, an important point, but one quite distinct from the one I am making. Perhaps engineering differs from applied science in enough ways that the interesting question is not how engineering differs from applied science but why they were ever thought to be the same.
For some historical background on this use, as well as my rationale for preferring this definition of ethics, see Michael Davis, “The Ethics Boom: What and Why”,Centennial Review 34 (Spring 1990): 163–186.
For more on this point, see Michael Davis, “Codes of Ethics, Professions, and Conflict of Interest: A Case of an Emerging Profession, Clinical Engineering”,Professional Ethics 1 (Spring/Summer 1992): 179–195.
American Institute of Electrical Engineers,Code of Principles of Professional Conduct (March 8, 1912).
Morris Llewellyn Cooke, “Ethics and the Engineering Profession”,Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 101 (May 1922), 69.
Sec. 4, “Canons of Ethics for Engineers”, Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (October 25, 1947).
1.1 “Canons of Ethics of Engineers”, Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (Ethics Committee, 1963).
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Davis, M. An historical preface to engineering ethics. Sci Eng Ethics 1, 33–48 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02628696
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02628696