Engineers Need the Liberal Arts

In its development, the American engineering profession has drawn upon two competing yet complementary traditions: the hands-on, muddy-boots pragmatism inherited from Britain and the elite, science-oriented approach of the French polytechnique. Science and mathematics gradually have taken a central position, with emphasis being placed upon their creative application. The less theoretical “hardware” aspects of technology have been delegated in part to graduates of two-year technician courses and four-year programs in engineering technology. Pure science has been left to the scientists. Business management has developed into a discipline of its own, although economic parameters remain central to an engineer’s tasks. But while engineers have performed miracles, and seen their profession grow to ever higher levels of knowledge and skill, it has not been without cost. The increasing technical content of even the most elemental en- gineering education has inevitably changed the nature of that education, forcing out peripheral concerns and all but eliminating the liberal arts that once were the heart of the college experience. Inescapably, engineers have become less broadly educated, less wide-ranging in their background and interests—in a word, less “cultured.” Engineering education in America came into being as undergraduate education, and its basic degree has always been the four-year bachelor of science. Many authorities have recommended that engineering adopt a minimum five-year course for entry into the profession. This has been tried from time to time at several institutions, but except for the Thayer School at Dartmouth College, all have reverted—under the pressure of economic competition—to the four-year program. A few engineering students voluntarily earn a bachelor of arts degree prior to the engineering B.S. But the vast majority take no more than a half-dozen non-technical courses during their undergraduate years, and of these most are likely to be in the “useful” social sciences rather than the “useless” humanities such as literature, history and philosophy. (Postgraduate programs, pursued by about a quarter of engineering graduates, are, of course, totally technical.) A century or more ago it was possible to combine liberal learning with technical training in a four-year engineering curriculum. There were few texts, a shortage of qualified professors, and no great abundance of engineering substance to be taught. In 1867, one-third of M.I.T.’s mechanical engineering program consisted of languages and humanities. However, with the exponential growth of engineering knowledge and the expanding technological needs of a young nation, the situation changed rapidly. Technical content increased, proponents of the four-year program stood firm against expansion of the course, and liberal education was perforce squeezed out. Eventually, to forestall complete vocationalizing of engineering education, leaders of the profession agreed upon a minimum 12½ percent liberal arts component for accredited curricula. This translates to the six non-technical courses I allude to above. But for all the narrowness of their interests and the limits of their education—and probably in some cases because of their intense focus—American engineers have done marvelous deeds. Even the psychological inadequacies revealed in numerous studies— and reaching new extremes in the computer “hackers” of today—have played a positive role in sublimated creativity. Surely engineering work has provided satisfactions for people whose lives might otherwise have been filled with frustration. In turn, obsessed technologists have repaid society many times over for the opportunity to follow their own particular paths of interest. Small wonder that so many engineers and engineering educators resent being derided for lack of “culture” and resist attempts to increase either the length of the engineering college course or its liberal arts component. The system works as it is, they maintain, and who can gainsay them? Society is well served and can ill afford to spend more time or resources on getting the engineers it so desperately needs. Industry is well satisfied. And prospective engineers, anxious to get on with their careers, are content. Besides, comes the impatient retort, in a technological age it is the technologically uninformed who are the true know-nothings. Nevertheless, there are widespread feelings that something is amiss. Even if the system does “work,” and even if most engineers and employers of engineers see little reason to change, a large and vocal minority are not at all satisfied. I am convinced that the quality of our technology, and consequently the quality of our lives, would be improved by the liberal enrichment of engineering education, by the broadening of horizons, the deepening of cultural awareness—in short, by the civilizing—of engineers. Engineers are already civilized, to be sure. More than this, engineers are civilizers, since civilization in its most elemental sense means bringing humans physically out of the state of primitive savagery. Engineers are also among the most civil of citizens. But if they do not partake of the moat sublime creations of civilization—the arts and intellectual discourse—they are not as civilized as they might be. And if they have talent and intelligence (as engineers do have in full measure) then they are not so much uncivilized as they are anti-civilization. I suggest that liberal education for engineers would bring members of the profession into leadership roles from which they are presently excluded, and that this, in turn, would bring significant economic and political benefits. Engineers do not have answers to all the great questions, but their absence from decision-making groups clearly works to our nation’s disadvantage. Their use as sometime “advisers” only partly compensates for their absence as principals. In Japan half the senior civil servants and half the industrial directors have engineering qualifications; in the United States the figure does not exceed 15 percent. and the engineers who make up this relatively small group are concentrated in technical positions. Also important for the well-being of society is the role that engineers can play in vitalizing and transmitting our cultural heritage. Large numbers of the brightest young people today want to be engineers. This is fine, but if becoming an engineer means turning one’s back on literature, history, and the arts, then who will be left to nurture our great cultural inheritance? I do not want to leave culture to academic specialists and latter-day Bohemians any more than I want to leave the running of the world to lawyers and MBAs. And while we are thinking about the advancement of society and the reputation of the engineering profession, let us not forget the welfare of the individual engineering student. For the young engineer, liberal education will bring delight in the arts and an introduction to those insights of literature, history and philosophy that so many engineers in their mature years regret having neglected. In an age when an increasing number of engineers will spend their working lives in large organizations, they need more than ever the personal discoveries and philosophical self-reliance that lie at the heart of the humanities. Finally, I believe that liberal education, by expanding the intellect and exercising the imagination, can make engineers technically more able. The importance of written and oral communication in modern engineering work has already been noted. But beyond this, in the non-verbal creative recesses of the engineer’s mind, I believe that flexibility and variety—poetry, art, music, stories, mytha—have a constructive role to play. I recognize that this is difficult, if not impossible, to prove, and that a case can be made for the creativity of the obsessively singleminded engineer. Nevertheless, there are many examples of broadly cultured scientists and engineers who derived technical inspiration from humanistic or artistic thought. Florman, a civil engineer, is vice president of Kreisler Borg Florman Construction Co., Scarsdale, NY 10583. Copyright © 1987 by Samuel C. Flormart. Reprinted by special arrangement with St. Martin’s Press. Inc.

Engineers Need the Liberal Arts

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of