Samuel C. Florman - The existential pleasures of engineering (1976)

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Since the lot of the common man had traditionally been one of unrelenting hardship, engineers looked upon their works as man's redeemer from despairing drudgery and burdensome labor. Once the common man was released from drudgery, the engineers reasoned, he would inevitably become educated, cultured and ennobled.... Next, elevation of the common man would tend to make all men more nearly equal, thus making the engineer an agent in the realization of the democratic dream, an apostle of democracy, as one engineer orator put it in 1905.... We are the priests of a new epoch, an engineering leader told his colleagues in 1895, without superstitions.

Samuel C. Florman
The most marvelous engineering feats have been performed each day, even more marvelous than they sometimes appear to our rather jaded sense of wonder. But how is it possible to appreciate these achievements when the very foundations of the profession are being attacked and appear to be crumbling?... The profession, for all its continuing technical achievements, finds itself at the present time in a Dark Age of the spirit.

Samuel C. Florman
In his emotional involvement with the machine, the engineer cannot help but feel at times that he has come face to face with a strange but potent form of life.

Samuel C. Florman
The civil engineer, with his hands literally in the soil, is existentially wedded to the earth, more so than any other man except perhaps the farmer.

Samuel C. Florman
The engineer's power was usually limited to a refusal to endorse a given plan, or to the tender of his resignation.

Samuel C. Florman
Engineering is superficial only to those who view it superficially. At the heart of engineering lies existential joy.

Samuel C. Florman