Deep Down in My Soul

Earlier I reviewed The Civilized Engineer by Samuel Florman. I had purchased the book for a class many years ago. After reading part of what was required for the class I decided to purchase a previous book Florman had written, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. This past weekend I managed to finish the book. Maybe I won’t ramble on about this one as much as I did about the previous one, but I make no promises.

TCE was more a book about the rift between engineering and society’s and the Liberal Arts’ view of engineering. TEPoE is more about “Why engineering?”. The book was originally written in the 1970s during the anti-technology and counter-culture movements that defined much of the time. The book is indelibly marked by this. Though the elements have softened with age they still exist, and the points Florman makes are still as pertinent as the day he penned them.

This book could truthfully go by the name of another book, To Engineer is Human. The two books are very different, and they take different meanings from the title. Florman spends most of the book punching holes in the idea of the un-naturalness of engineering. He promotes the idea that engineering is a most basic part of being human. Florman makes sure to support himself with facts, but he takes great care to support himself with feelings and such that the existentialists deem more worthy than mere science.

To be honest with you, when I started this book I wasn’t quite sure what existentialism meant. To me it was always like the term post-modernism. It means different things to different people, and the ideas are so nebulous that their very meaning precludes definition in words. But as it turns out my basic seat of the pants feeling for the word was essentially right. Florman is primarily using the word as the deep down essential part of being human. The existential pleasures are the ones that give us our most meaningful sense of belonging and accomplishment and warm us to the very center. Florman maintains that engineering, as a basic part of human existence, provides these pleasures. And I have to agree. I personally have felt the pleasure of coming up with a fast solution to a pressing problem, and I have had the elation of realizing the answer to a question that has plagued me. I freely admit that during some machine design while I Co-Oped I had to get up and run around the engineering floor and manufacturing floor when I realized a solution to a problem or an elegant refinement of a design.

Anyway, I dearly liked the book. Florman does an excellent job in writing prose and describing the mind of the engineer. I really enjoyed reading the book and would actually recommend it to some people engineers and the like better. I think this book is more widely enjoyable than TCE. Reading this book is one of the things that lead me to write a post a couple of weeks back. Maybe it could do something similar for you.