Professional Ethics

In an engineering education, the fundamental purpose of the college/university years is to enable you in a short period to time, to learn of, and to profit by, the experiences, discoveries, and interpretations of the thousands who have gone before you in the application of nature’s laws and material for the use of mankind. For you, an engineering graduate at the threshold of a professional career, your total education has only begun. So, what is required of you as an engineer? An engineer must consciously develop some very specific and basic qualities. Professor William Wickenden, in his booklet A Professional Guide for Young Engineers, presents them as follows: 1. Courage and integrity are prime requisites for a successful engineer. Do not continue in engineering if you are afraid to take calculated risks and to make decisions on the basis of available information; very seldom will you know in advance the certain answer to any major engineering problem. You must be

Contemporary technologically advanced civilization has made massive changes in the environment. Western society has tended to conceive of nature as passive, as the fit object of human manipulation and control. This view of nature as passive is amply reflected in our language about the nature world. Land is to be “developed.” “Raw” land is to be “improved.” Natural resources are to be “exploited” and “consumed.” Trees are to be “harvested.” The rivers are to be “harnessed” to produce electrical power. The wilderness must be “managed.” Nature, like the rest of the non-human world, is to be subservient to human purposes. The environmental movement, so influential during the last twenty-five years, is a reaction against this attitude toward nature, but there is still a question as to whether the concern for non-human nature should be a part of professional engineering ethics rather than an engineer’s personal ethics. What are some of the arguments for and against including a concern