Civilized Engineer

...In the end he "slammed his cards down on the table, looked upward, and said in a loud voice, 'Dear Lord, I know that I am unworthy . . . but why did you have to abandon me on this island with nobody for company but these boring engineers?'" Despite Florman's conviction that it is "the main business of humankind to build, to be technologically creative" and his "resentment of Plato" and others who denigrate technology, this was a personal epiphany...

...But engineers have not always been dull...

...Perapologia, he stresses that "engineers are already civilized," are in fact "civilizers, since civilization in its most elemental sense means bringing humans physically out of the state of primitive savagery...

...Chapter one considers his dual attraction to engineering and to literature, a combination that led to his first book...

...chapter two restates his thesis from Existential Pleasures...

...Herbert Hoover, who carried this tradition into the early twentieth century, saw "the apprenticeship system replaced by accredited university curricula — including [in his own words] 'wider learning in the humanities...

...As Aristotle says in his criticisms of Plato, "It is hard to see how knowing the 'good itself will help a weaver or a carpenter in the practice of his own craft, or how anyone will be a better physician or general for having contemplated the Idea itself" (Nicomachean Ethics I, 6...

...Florman's own brief for "civilizing engineers" aims to both correct and deepen this cause...

...Good engineers do good engineering...

...One does not, of course, have to be broadly educated to be a good engineer, and "hick engineers" (not his term) who subordinate themselves to a team effort compare quite favorably with sophisticated individualistic professionals in terms of practical ability and moral sensitivity...

...Indeed, in the current debate over engineering ethics, Florman rejects the stress on whistle-blowing and what might be called the Platonic theory of goodness...

...Nevertheless, two factors recently have promoted a broader (not to say transcendent) education for engineers...

...In the evenings he would join other engineers to have a beer, play cards, and talk — about work, sports, and girls...

...Exemplifying its own appeal, Florman begins with reflections on his previous work...

...He concludes with a reflective "personal coda...

...Florman regrets "the passing of the venerable engineers of the nineteenth century, the Roeblings and their ilk, men of learning and artistic sensibility, scholars as well as doers, leaders who gave the profession an aura of true nobility...

...With subsequent increases in technical content, engineering education has become ever more specialized and forcefully deprived of much of its experiential character as well as any extensive liberal arts component...

...The liberally educated engineer, it is true, may never be more than a minority of the profession...

...758: Commonweal...

...another is "the fear and suspicion of technology" that derives from nuclear energy, environmental pollution, and the consumer movement...

...but was rebuffed each time...

...The disciplina would in the end work its own apologia — as Samuel C. Florman himself ably demonstrates...

...One is the increasing need for communication skills...

...The personal tone is actually set at the beginning with a story about how, as young civil engineer in 1945, the navy sent Florman to an island in the Pacific to construct airstrips, Quonset huts, roads, etc...

...The disciplina came first, with his Engineering and the Liberal Arts (1968), a plea for the greater education of technologists in history, literature, philosophy, art, and music...

...The heart of Florman's vision, however, is chapters eighteen through twenty-two on "The Civilized Engineer...

...Good engineers are not those dedicated to some trans-engineering good such as the public welfare...

...The distinctiveness of The Civilized Engineer is that it combines Florman early and late...

...Yet like the prophetic remnant or the salt of the Gospel, liberal engineers would be "a source of amelioration for our technology and for our society...

...Enlightened, sensitive, broadly educated engineers — civilized engineers — would endow their work with an additional touch of grace, and in their contact with their fellow citizens would create a more affirmative and profound feeling about engineering than that which exists today...

...Against this background, it is Florman's desire ' 'to plead the cause of a humanistic professionalism, an ennobled engineering that will rise out of the ashes of vocational training...

...Then come two longer chapters on the history of engineering, a series of pieces on professional engineering ethics, and a collection of more topical articles which originally appeared in Technology Review...

...Carl Mitcham amuel Florman's fourth book continues his lucid disciplina of and apologia for the engineering profession...

...Florman wholeheartedly agrees...

...It was, however, the apologia of The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (1976) and its follow-up, Blaming Technology (1981), that made Florman famous...

...But per disciplina, Florman argues that "if they do not partake of the most sublime creations of civilization — the arts and intellectual discourse — they are not as civilized as they might be...

...One evening they were joined by a chaplain who tried to interject serious issues — the United Nations, the morality of nuclear weapons, religion in the postwar world, etc...

...A critique of the 1970s anti-technology movement and a paean to the inherent satisfactions of engineering work, Existential Pleasures caught the public eye...

...Not just the critic of technology's critics, he also criticizes engineers and encourages them "to be introspective...