EDITORIALS - Is Engineering Mutating? - Industrial & Engineering

Ind. Eng. Chem. , 1966, 58 (3), pp 5–5. DOI: 10.1021/ie50675a001. Publication Date: March 1966. Cite this:Ind. Eng. Chem. 58, 3, 5-5. Note: In lieu ...
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EDITORIAL

INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY E d i t o r , D A V I D E. G U S H E E Editorial H e a d q u a r t e r s 1155 S i x t e e n t h St., N . W . , W a s h i n g t o n , D. C . 20036 P h o n e 202-737-3337 Teletype W A 2 3 Assistant E d i t o r s : Elspeth M a i n l a n d , Joseph H. S. H a g g i n , J o h n A . K i n g M a n a g e r , R e s e a r c h Results Service: Stella A n d e r s o n Layout a n d Production Joseph J a c o b s Art Director, Leroy Corcora'n, Bill Caldwell (Layout) Production-Easton Pa. Associate E d i t o r : d h a r l o t t e C. S a y r e

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I s Engineering Mutating? everal points of view expressed and implied recently on technical and its meaning have considerable significance to engineering education and to the social role of engineers. The data indicate that engineers and engineering are penetrating into medical and biological areas, into chemistry and physics, into mathematics and into sociology, while each of these traditional disciplines is being integrated into over-all sociological utilization of technology. Wesley J. Hennessy, executive dean of Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, pointed out recently that with our computers we are now making mathematical models of human blood flow, glucose metabolism, and the electrical activity of the heart, while with our more traditional engineering skills we are developing artificial hearts, kidneys, and other organs. Rep. Weston E. Vivian (D.-Mich.) the only MIT graduate and the only Ph.D. physical scientist in Congress, and a member of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, said last month that a mathematical model of the human brain may well be possible within two decades and that one of the purposes of such models would be to predict sociological behavior so that governments could plan for civil and international peace. Rep. Vivian says that these goals are already conscious factors in Congressional decisions concerning the funding of R&D. The ASEE Committee on Goals of Engineering Education (I&EC, January 1966, page 5) feels that all the engineering disciplines are trending toward a common ground. Even the casual observer would note the strong resemblances among the meeting programs of ACS, AIChE, IEEE, AIP, ASME, AIME, and other scientific and technological societies. There is a common focus on details of molecular structure and molecular rate processes at the phenomenological level, on simulation and optimization at the sociological level, and on the mathematics required to describe quantitatively what is found and how to use it. These scientific and technological societies, responding to the real and urgent needs of their members-largely industrially employed in most cases-have gravitated toward their equivalent of a "commoncore engineering curriculum." But, unlike the recommendations of the ASEE committee, their approach permits them to retain firmly their grip on their originating sciences and to impose the common factors only on top of their basically different foundations. Perhaps the key to an appropriate scientific and engineering response to the changing pattern of how technical people are used has already been forged.

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