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From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Subject: Re: The Engineering Profession (was Re: Engineering Education)
Message-ID: <90Aug8.230826edt.8276@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Keywords: engineering,education,Waterloo
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <1056@eedsp.eedsp.gatech.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 90 03:09:10 GMT
Lines: 62

baud@eedsp.UUCP (Kurt Baudendistel) writes:
>[from] Editor's Comment of Digital Design, February 1986.
>Professionals [by John Bond]
>-------------
>
>I have often wondered why engineers ar considered less ``professional''
>than doctors and lawyers.  After all, it takes as much intelligence and
>perseverance [...] A recent article [...] gave me some insight into the
>engineers' sdilemma. Quoting sociaologist Randall Collins, the article states:
>``A strong profession requires a real technical skill that produces
>demonstrable results and can be taught.  The skill must be difficult enough
>to require training and reliable enough to produce results.  But it cannot be
>too reliable, for then outsiders can judge the work by its results.''  The
>article notes that engineers have never gained the prestige and independence
>of doctors and lawyers because the engineer's compentence is too clearly on
>display.  [...] That's not a bad place to be but it doesn't get the respect
>that the world's more nebulous professions command. [...]
>Of course, professional status waxes and wanes according to the notions of
>the times.  Shamans and clergymen have each, in their time, exerted a
>powerful professional presence only to lose some of that status as
>knowledge advanced and some the the mystery was dispelled.
>
>[...]  Economists and MBAs are a good example.  They require training and
>sometimes even produce results, although not too reliably.  They are the
>shamans of our time, since reading the entrails of goats is no longer in
>vogue.  Naturally, they have more status than engineers.  I suspect that
>economists will be around longer than the MBAs who may eventually be judged
>by the results they produce.  Economics, on the other hand, produces results
>that are hardly ever right.  But it doesn't matter because no one can
>understand or agree upon either the methods or the results.  Thus it is the
>perfect shamanistic profession and since computer modeling is less disgusting
>than reading entrails, it appeals to a wider audience.


I agree that nebulism has important effects on how people judge results,
but is not the determinant of how they *value* those results.


The above article states an opinion which, I think, partly confounds the
determinants of respect for the various professions.  While I agree that
professions in nebuous domains (held in any credence) receive undue respect,
I do not think that this is the major determinant.  What is NOT noticed
is that all the domains that are put foremost in the article, (medicine,
law, economics) are nebulous PRECISELY because they center on human issues,
with all the concommitant nebulism of human affairs and human biology and
human sociology.  Could it be that the respect these professions receive
can be directly correlated with subjectively perceived *human relevance*?

Further, as a disproof, medicine is more and more respected as it becomes
more and more scientific, and is much more respected than psychology (or
horroscopes), which most people believe while the field remains very
mystical.  Nobody has ever produced an equation for `thought', or explained
the neural mechanisms of any higher thought, etc etc, but psychologists are
not highly respected, in my experience.  To the average joe, his health
is much more important than nebulous descriptions of what goes on in his
head.

Again, I agree that nebulism has important effects on how people judge
results, but is not the determinant of how they value those results.
The value of a field, and the desire that people display to enter into
that field, is determined mainly by the perceived benefit -- financial,
social, relevance, ... etc.  Human success, not technical success.