ABSTRACT
In her influential book about the engineering profession, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change, Rosalind Williams, an eminent historian and dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims that “the establishment of an autonomous engineering profession oriented toward ideals of broad social responsibility . . . has not happened and is not going to happen’’ (Williams, 2002, p. 80). Her book was written from the point of view of someone who participated intensively in the organisational and intellectual transformation that MIT was going through at the time, and the shaping of her arguments reflects the controversies, communication barriers and dead ends that emerge when engineering academics discuss the future of their discipline. The disagreement about the nature of engineering practice is, however, quite old, and not confined to the walled gardens of the academy. The identity crisis of the engineering profession, which Williams refers to when she points out that present-day engineers follow the flow of innovation rather than commitment to an organisation (Williams, 2002, p. 63), is one of a number of identity crises that punctuated the evolution of engineering in the last two centuries. These crises have never been solved, and my conjecture is that much could have been gained if those concerned with their solution had expanded their insights by looking into the valuable legacy of engineering practice.
