Engineering: Cultural, Methodological, and Definitional Issues

At the beginning of the twentieth century, engineering was engaged in transformations revolving around the nature and application of engineering knowledge and the education and social status of its practitioners. These transformations continued well into the century, and while the pace of change had certainly abated by the end of that period, change nevertheless remained a constant throughout.

The advent of the new ‘‘science-based’’ fields of electrical and chemical engineering in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lent weight to the emerging view that the relationship between science and engineering was that science discovered and explained fundamental truths while engineering applied the theories produced by science to the production of technical artifacts. This led many to divide the history of engineering into two principal periods: prescientific engineering followed by science-based engineering. The latter, of course, was seen as far more effective owing to its reliance on science.

This neat conceptualization, however, is not supported by either the historical record or actual engineering practice. Engineers throughout history up to and including the present have utilized a wide variety of knowledge ranging from rules of thumb (heuristics) to tacit understanding to graphical methods of analysis to sophisticated analytical models to scientifically derived principles of material (in its broadest sense) behavior.

Various attempts at categorizing these different types of knowledge have been made (Vincenti, 1993; Addis, 1990), but they are less important for the particular organizing schemes they suggest than for their explicit observation that modern engineering is not simply or even primarily a matter of applied science (although the scientific component is certainly important).

One indicator of this was Project Hindsight, a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960s that painstakingly analyzed the key intellectual contributions directly underlying the development of 20 core weapons systems and revealed that the vast majority constituted technological rather than scientific knowledge.

The process by which engineering knowledge grows and advances, however, does appear to echo the process by which scientific knowledge grows and advances. In broad terms, most models of the latter still invoke the notion of paradigm shifts attributed to Thomas Kuhn (1996). This model divides scientific practice into periods of normalcy and disruption.

The former is characterized by shared fundamental assumptions about the world (or at least the part of it that is relevant to the area of investigation) and the way it operates. These assumptions are so basic and ingrained that they are seldom explicitly examined. Eventually, compelling empirical evidence arises that calls into question the validity of those assumptions.

A new paradigm forms to account for the new evidence (typically encountering substantial resistance) and, if it contains sufficient explanatory power, ultimately replaces the old paradigm with its new set of fundamental assumptions. Normal science then resumes within the new paradigm.

Fundamentally similar models have been proposed to describe the development of engineering knowledge. These models differentiate between normal and disruptive practice. They also tend to invoke a variation-selection-retention mechanism to explain how new solutions—embodying fundamentally new assumptions—to a problem are generated and the most effective one selected and retained.

Precisely because engineering is more than simply applied science, there is substantial room for variation in practice, including variation rooted in cultural differences. Differing professional and academic commitments to theoretical analysis on the one hand and empirical experimentation on the other, for example, will influence design goals and priorities (given that tradeoffs are inescapable) such as economy, simplicity, and esthetics. Those goals and priorities then shape both the variation and selection of technical alternatives.

While these processes for science and engineering certainly exhibit substantial similarities (in fact they represent variations on what some believe is a universal model for the generation and growth of knowledge) the values and objectives they embody are in many ways the reverse of each other. Edwin Layton Jr. (1971) has dubbed science and engineering ‘‘mirror-image twins.’’ This is most immediately obvious in their goals.

Whereas science aims to understand a phenomenon, engineering aims to solve a practical problem. In the physical sciences, the more abstract and general the work the better. Specific, concrete applications tend to garner less prestige. In engineering, on the other hand, the successful design and creation of artifacts or processes usually draws the most applause while purely theoretical work is less revered. For scientists, publication of results is viewed as an integral activity while, for engineers, publication is of decidedly less importance than actual practice.

While these observations remain largely accurate, they have by no means been immutable. The professionalization of engineering and attempts to firmly ground it in science produced an impetus to publish that began in the nineteenth century and increased throughout the twentieth. This trend was reinforced by the rise of academic engineering with its inherent need for publication outlets.

The latter decades of the twentieth century witnessed a partial breakdown of the divide that had developed between practicing and academic engineers in the U.S. and the U.K. as universities were increasingly seen as a key source of new products and processes for industry. In a sense, this represented a return to the close ties between industry and engineering academics in the early decades of the century, but in this case the focal point was the production of intellectual property rather than the production of employees.

This pattern was less substantial in other countries such as France and Germany, where scientific formalism in engineering had long been embraced and close cooperation between academic engineering and industry had always been prevalent.

Engineering education both motivated and reflected the move toward science-based engineering. This orientation was exactly the opposite of what characterized American engineering education through most of the nineteenth century. At the turn of the century, most practicing engineers in the U.S. had been trained through apprenticeship.

Mechanical engineers were the product of a (machine) ‘‘shop culture’’ while civil engineers came out of a ‘‘field culture.’’ The idea of engineers being trained in a school setting was still considered a bit odd by many, and the new scientifically oriented engineers emerging from American colleges and universities were viewed with some suspicion.

French technical education at the end of the nineteenth century, in contrast, was at its highest level the epitome of science-based engineering. French technical education was just as stratified as French society (the Revolution having dampened but not eliminated class distinctions). Its three tiers catered to very different populations and in very different ways. At the top of the hierarchy, as is the case today, were the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique and its affiliated Ecoles d’Application.

The former provided education in engineering fundamentals (what today would be considered an engineering core curriculum), after which the latter would provide specialized training in a particular technical field. The vast majority of graduates ended up working for either the state or the military. The second tier consisted of the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, which aimed to train engineers for industry rather than government or military service.

Making up the third tier were the Ecoles d’Arts et Metiers, which concentrated on workshop training such as forging and machine fitting. This contrasted with the top tier, which emphasized mathematical theory. The educational thrust of the second tier was somewhere in the middle, revolving around such things as industrial chemistry and metallurgy.

Even as academia and industry throughout the industrialized world began to embrace (if they had not already) the notion of engineering as applied science, evidence of its limitations occasionally presented itself. Research at the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads between the world wars, for example, reflected the shift from empirically based research to research focused on theory and mathematical models (albeit informed by data gleaned from small-scale isolated experiments).

Full-scale field studies were replaced by a search for fundamental principles that could serve as a basis for ‘‘rational’’ road design. This more scientific approach for road design, however, proved far less effective than the earlier efforts. Such cases reveal the complexity of the role science plays in engineering and that wholesale adoption of a scientific sensibility does not necessarily serve the ends of engineering.

Nevertheless, if science was the heir apparent to experience as a basis for engineering at the turn of the century, it was undeniably king in the aftermath of World War II. While the atomic bomb is usually seen as the most prominent example of scientific contributions to the war effort, there were plenty of others as well, including radar and the digital computer. That these were at least as much technological as scientific achievements was an unappreciated distinction. As a result, universities in the U.S. and the U.K. hastened to rid themselves of the last vestiges of practical training.

A review of university engineering education in the early 1950s sponsored by the American Society for Engineering Education fully reflected the ethos of engineering as applied science. In recognition of the increased reliance on science, the report recommended that new engineering faculty have an appropriate doctorate degree (PhD). It also called for the elimination of courses having a ‘‘high vocational and skill content’’ or attempting to convey “engineering art and practice’’ in favor of courses in engineering science, effectively sounding an official death knell for shop and field culture.

The emphasis on theory and analysis was further reinforced by the general expansion of American higher education after the war, driven in part by an influx of World War II veterans. Swelling enrollments meant large class sizes, and engineering classes were no exception. Theory and analysis lent themselves to large lecture classes more readily than did design and other less scientific types of engineering knowledge.

By the end of the decade, however, employers and practicing engineers in both the U.S. and Europe were beginning to complain of the declining ability of engineering graduates to engage in design.

Accompanying these complaints was increasing criticism of engineering education that imbued students with a ‘‘blind faith’’ in the results of theoretical calculations and left them unable to relate mathematical engineering models to the requirements and behavior of actual artifacts. (Similar concerns have been voiced more recently regarding the results of computer-aided design tools.) Increasingly, engineering graduates, while displaying formidable analytical skills, exhibited a much-reduced ability to actually design technical artifacts.

Moreover, this tendency became more pronounced with each higher academic degree. As a result, those recruited to engineering faculties were by definition those with the least inclination toward design. A 1980 international survey of engineering education found that while U.S. engineering curricula had to some extent reintroduced design as a topic of instruction, it was generally held in low esteem by the academy. In contrast, engineering education in Germany and the Netherlands incorporated a strong practical component with no diminution of status. Japan fell somewhere in between.

The twentieth century brought with it an acceleration of changes to the professional status of engineers that had been sparked by the development of large-scale industrial corporations in sectors heavily dependent on science and technology. Prior to this time, engineers, or at least those who were not part of their nation’s military or government, practiced as independent professionals, typically on a contractual basis.

As such, they enjoyed a degree of autonomy comparable to that of other independent professionals such as doctors and lawyers. The rise of large science and technology-based corporations changed this as, over time, increasing numbers of engineers became salaried employees rather than autonomous practitioners.

These large corporations were epitomized by firms such as General Electric (GE), American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) and DuPont. In addition to their need for engineers to carry out their day-to-day operations, these firms and those like them also required large pools of scientific and technical expertise to conduct research and development (R&D). These three companies, in fact, became as well known for their industrial R&D laboratories as for their other activities.

That companies like GE, AT&T, and DuPont were at the forefront of this trend was not surprising. The electrical and chemical industries were considered deeply rooted in scientific knowledge right from the beginning and so were pioneers of industrial research. Other industries quickly followed suit. The years between the turn of the century and World War II saw a sweeping surge in corporate scientific and technical R&D.

This need for highly trained researchers as well as operating personnel was a key force driving the shift in engineering education from shop and field culture to a school culture. Industry and higher education worked together quite closely to shape engineering curricula that would produce employees with the requisite knowledge and skill sets.

Upon entering the industrial work force, engineering graduates would often be put through internal corporate training programs designed to make them effective and loyal employees whose interests were appropriately aligned with those of their employer. Socialization was just as much an objective as technical proficiency and an understanding of company operations. The GE ‘‘test course’’ was one of the earliest and best known of these programs.

This shift in circumstances produced consternation on the part of engineers who worried a great deal about their status in society (and still do). This was especially true in the U.S. and the U.K., where there was a distinct absence of class-oriented mechanisms supportive of their status goals or class-based stratification that was almost wholly independent of those goals, respectively. This was unlike the situation in France, where the threetiered system of technical education at least promised those in the top tier a modicum of professional status.

Engineers as employees confronted a fundamental tension. On the one hand, as employees they were expected to put the interests of their employers first and foremost, especially those who rose to management positions. On the other hand, as professionals they were expected to concern themselves with the interests of society as a whole.

Among U.S. engineers in the early years of the twentieth century, this latter imperative crystallized under the rubric of social responsibility. Social responsibility in the sense of disinterested public service implied a measure of professional autonomy while at the same time not overly offending corporate managers.

Nowhere was this notion more firmly embraced than in the U.S. The progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had created a deep and abiding faith in the power of scientific and technical expertise in the public service. While engineers had always been involved in the development of important infrastructure— roads, bridges, dams, and so on—they began to be perceived by many, including themselves, as essential instruments of material progress and improved quality of life.

Many U.S. engineers took this perspective even further, viewing themselves as the shepherds of societal progress by virtue of their commitment to rational and impartial thought and analysis. This attitude found its fullest, albeit most futile, expression in the technocracy movement between the World Wars. In seeking to apply the methods of scientific rationalism to governance, however, technocracy seriously discredited the notion of social responsibility rather than acting as its ultimate expression.

In practical terms, this tension between professionalism and corporate capitalism frequently played itself out within the engineering professional societies. (As a result of the importance of its stratified system of technical education, sector- based professional engineering societies in France have not developed in the same way or played the same role as those in the U.S. and the U.K.) Issues of membership requirements (technical versus business), ethical codes, and disciplinary mechanisms were all areas in which the clashing priorities of engineers and managers could not be entirely avoided.

These tensions were verbally reconciled by equating societal progress with technological progress, thereby making society by definition the beneficiary of corporate technical activities. When it came to actions, however, there was no escaping the fact that an insistence on professional autonomy and independent thinking at some point had to come into active conflict with the corporate ethos.

Engineering professional societies in other countries often carried with them a degree of regulatory authority for their fields, and this provided a strategic avenue that U.S. engineering professional societies lacked. In the U.K., for example, the engineering professional societies accredit curricula and nominate Chartered Engineers, a mark of technical competence and achievement. Moreover, these societies set rigorous entry requirements such that even an engineering degree from an accredited curriculum is often insufficient to fully exempt a graduate from society entrance exams.

This is not to say that engineers in the U.K. or elsewhere do not worry about their status in the eyes of the public or with respect to other professions. However, certain professional structures can offer a means of at least partially addressing those concerns while others are less effective in that regard.

Engineering in the twentieth century then, is not a story of the straightforward and triumphal application of science to the creation of technical artifacts. Rather, it is a very human story of myriad motivations, perceptions, and conflicts. The engineering achievements of the century are not at all diminished by recognizing that the epistemological, educational, and professional development of engineering has been as much a social process as anything else.

On the contrary, the achievements become all the more impressive, and the failures all the more understandable, with an appreciation of the nonphysical forces that have been pivotal in shaping engineering from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first.