Thinking Like an Engineer: Studies in the Ethics of a Profession

"Thinking Like an Engineer" is a significant contribution mainly, from my perspective as an engineer, because it can help every engineer appreciate deeper her own work and the engineering community she belongs. "Thinking Like an Engineer" is a contribution both in engineering ethics (by shedding light to codes of professional conduct for engineers) and in the philosophy of engineering. With this book, the philosopher author has set a very high goal: he aims at describing the thinking of an engineer in a way that the engineers themselves will recognize as authentic. The fact that he succeeds admirably in achieving his goal, together with some parts of the book, point to two very important attributes of the author. First, his conviction that the higher calling of philosophy (and philosophers!) is to express deep truths we, the non-philosophers, have not managed to express in words, while at some unspoken level we recognize them as truths. Second, his genuine interest in engineering and engineers, whom he has understood with the incisiveness of a philosopher and the objectivity of an outside observer, for the purpose not of piling publications read among his own colleagues, but of offering something useful to the community of engineers he loves and studies. I include below an excerpt from the preface of the book, which is characteristic of the incisiveness of its author: Knowledge, though of course part of what makes an engineer, is only a part. At least as important is the way the knower moves (or, at least, is supposed to move) from knowledge to action. That movement from knowledge to action is the "thinking" of my title. We, engineers, are very lucky to have Michael Davis stumble upon us and decide to stay with us. In the epilogue of his book, Davis puts forward four questions for the social sciences, partly as the obligatory "further research needed", partly as a genuine invitation to them to study engineering and engineers: What is engineering? What do engineers do? How do engineering decisions get made? What can engineers do? (i.e., what is the measure of the engineer's autonomy?) I wish and hope that the social scientists who will respond to the invitation will also share Davis's goal of sounding authentic to engineers.