`Existential Pleasures' reveals meaning behind the lives of S/Es

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by Justus Baird

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Samuel Florman's book, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering , provides reasons that hit close to home. He argues that the engineering program at most universities "is laborious and in many respects disagreeable."

The "hands-on" approach is largely gone, increasingly replaced by scientific theory.

"Research" is in while "teaching" is out, a casualty of the way engineering education has been funded for several decades.

Rice undergraduate engineers (especially first- and second-year students) would agree wholeheartedly if surveyed.

Existential Pleasures is both timely and timeless. It speaks for this usually silent profession, defending the engineer against both the age-old science/engineering bashing and more recent anti-technologists who put engineers on trial for the environmental debacle of the late 20th century.

One study in the book condemns the engineer with the harsh words, "With the exception of research, administrative and sales specialties, [the engineering profession] is composed of a homogenous group of men with a fairly narrow range of temperamental variation."

Florman defends engineers, asserting that "the nature of engineering has been misconceived. Analysis, rationality, materialism and practical creativity do not preclude emotional fulfillment; they are pathways to such fulfillment. ... At the heart of engineering lies existential joy."

Translation: "I like to stay up late with my calculator and my equations. It's the way I see, understand and marvel at the world."

Ada Louise of the New York Times provides a defense even sweeter to a civil engineer such as Florman or myself.

She asserts that the "structural arts" produce tangible rewards -- "dams that challenge mountains, roads that leap chasms and domes that span miles" -- that provide positive contrast to the "willful negativism and transient novelty that have made so much of painting and literature ... a kind of diminishing, naughty game."

Many pages are dedicated to defending the engineer against the technology critics of our time. Florman disputes the idea that "technology is the root of society's problems."

He points out that during the "Golden Age of Engineering" (1850-1950), engineers were seen as heroes, solving problems through technology.

While accepting the responsibility of practicality and safety-mindedness, Florman emphasizes that the decisions that will "save the world" in the future will most likely be political, not technical.

He adds, "If engineers could add a measure of sophistication to their other attributes and then move away from their drafting tables to infiltrate society as leaders of corporations, universities, government agencies and community groups, society's chances of coping with its problems would be markedly improved."

I remember reading not long ago that Yasir Arafat was once a civil engineer. It is likely that Florman had other leaders in mind when he wrote those words.

To the reader's delight, this book is much more than an "Engineer's Defense Manual"; it discusses many current trends in the engineering field.

In a chapter on women and engineering, Florman says the recent introduction of women into engineering has brought a new dimension to the profession -- "a broader view" and a "more philosophical and aesthetic concern."

Not one page of The Existential Pleasures of Engineering contains a chart, graph, figure, equation, example or table, so it should be required reading for every engineering student.

It weighs and costs one-tenth of my current 20-pound, $72, 1257-page Manual of Steel Construction .

It will help explain the existential pleasure you feel every time you come a little closer to understanding this crazy universe.

And for the non-S/E reader, Florman will help you understand that little smile on an engineer's face late at night when the numbers in the small box on page 10 of a homework assignment match the three digits in the back of the 12-pound book.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the April 7, 1995 issue.

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