A review of The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Can’t Solve Our Global Problems, by Henry Petroski
274 pages. Knopf, 2010. $26.95

If would-be pocket-protecting scientists were the kids that received wedgies on the playground and were nearly forced into malnutrition by bullies stealing their lunch money, I wonder what would-be engineers endured in Henry Petroski’s school.

“Engineering can be as much of an assault on the frontiers of knowledge as is science,” asserts Petroski in The Essential Engineer, sounding the battle trumpet of engineering. A professor of civil engineering at Duke University, Petroski’s out to get engineers some respect. He’s tired of bully scientists hogging the spotlight of public esteem and relevance.

A writer of fourteen previous books aimed at communicating the engineering profession to the general public, Petroski is often referred to as “the poet laureate of technology.” And if you’re looking to fill an open spot at your weekly poker meeting, you might consider inviting him. A prospective reader need look no further than the front cover to see his cards in the subtitle: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems. This reveals two important aspects about your potential poker foe in Petroski that come up repeatedly in The Essential Engineer and are pills you’ll just have to swallow to get to his message: a) he’s got a beef with science and b) he’s got a flare for the obvious.

First off, is there anyone who’d argue that science alone will solve our global problems? I’ve met scientists paled to ghostly hues by entire lifetimes spent beneath the faint hum of vent hoods and LED track lighting within the belly of a basement laboratory, emerging only occasionally to scratch their heads and squint quizzically at the bright yellow ball in the noonday sky and even they’d be hard-pressed to argue for Science as Savior of all things worldly and mortal.

With scientific literacy in its current state, I imagine many an American citizen to read this subtitle and think, “wait, nobody told me science was supposed to solve all our problems! Here all this time I’ve been buying stock in Facebook!”

My own misgivings about the subtitle and the state of American scientific literacy aside, I found the engineer in me cheering right along with Petroski on his quest to elevate the unsung engineer in a world seemingly aligned to praise the great scientist. “Engineers tend to crow so little that they seldom get recognized for their work,” writes Petroski. In The Essential Engineer, he volunteers to do the crowing.

Petroski writes of engineering as an organic process that doesn’t need to wait for science to give a complete understanding of phenomena before setting off to change the world. He gives vivid examples—Thomas Edison enlightening the American industrial machine, Guglielmo Marconi sending wireless telegraphy over the ocean for the first time despite not possessing an understanding of electromagnetism, the Wright Brothers designing their aircraft before a theoretical basis for aerodynamics was established—that he uses to strengthen the case that engineering should be its own pillar of equal height to science in the foundation of modern civilization. This is where Petroski’s extensive technical experience and curious mind for the stories behind technology shines through.

He goes on to claim Einstein as an engineer at heart, linking his humble patent office beginnings with a fascinating account of one of Einstein’s own failed patents (written with fellow physicist-inventor Leo Szilard) on a refrigeration system using butane as a refrigerant over natural gas, which had been leaking from compressors with occasionally fatal consequences. By Einstein’s example, Petroski develops the idea that patents have served as a vital cog in the iterative process of engineering. Again drawing comparisons to science, Petroski writes, “Each new patent is akin to a new hypothesis.”

Petroski continues to explore the shared intellectual heritage and symbiotic relationship between science and engineering through three chapters of explanation into the history of the linear model of research and development in the United States, which traces its roots to American engineer and first presidential science advisor during World War II, Vannevar Bush. “Just as science is a never-ending quest to uncover the mysteries of the universe,” writes Petroski, “so engineering is the never-ending pursuit of a better system, including how the nuts and bolts will interface with the dollars and cents and the supply and demand.”

Yet at times, Petroski indicates in not so subtle terms that the pillar of engineering should stand even taller than that of science. The big, hairy, nasty problems in the world like climate change, alternative energy, and natural disasters need engineers and engineering to play a leadership role, he argues. That’s because engineers, like scientists, are in the business of dealing with risk and uncertainty. But unlike scientists, engineers are equipped to cut across disciplines to apply creative solutions to these problems using their understanding of risk and uncertainty, whereas scientists give us only warnings.

This is where Petroski’s optimism at having a winning hand might get the best of him. In over-simplifying the shortcomings of science, Petroski seems to overstate the promise of technology and design. Quotes like: “The engineer is a worldly scientist,” and “if we wish to solve real and pressing problems, we should focus on the development end of R&D” merely amplify the biased tone throughout the book, further alienating the cause he says he wants to champion—that scientists and engineers actually need to work together to solve complex challenges.

Maybe it was The Essential Engineer’s genesis from a scattering of Petroski’s regular columns in American Scientist, the magazine of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, and ASEE Prism that causes it to lose focus. Tangents into the design of speedbumps, the Blackberry’s effect on the blurred line between work and leisure, and the design of the ampersand are distracting allegories that dilute his point: here, he wants to make a claim for increased emphasis on engineering’s role in solving society’s problems and ends up with an interesting but disconnected list of mundane things engineers happen to do.

Other segues into the realm of the distractingly obvious include the assertion that “there are no easy solutions to tough problems” and “[engineering] is a journey with frequent stops, much backtracking, and many redirections, but never a truly final destination.” Couldn’t one say the same about, oh, just about anything? Skateboarding? Learning a new language? Attempting to unlock the ultimate answer to the origins and fate of the universe?

These are minor qualms that could be overlooked if they didn’t recur repeatedly throughout the book. Instead, they discredit the author’s renowned credibility as an international thought leader in the field of engineering. Nowhere was this more clearly evident than in the penultimate chapter, when Petroski punctuates his attack on science in a strange and counterproductive manner. He writes about the Grand Challenges issued by the National Academy of Engineering, which are listed as follows:

• make solar energy affordable
•
• provide energy from fusion
•
• develop carbon sequestration methods
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• manage the nitrogen cycle
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• provide access to clean water
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• restore and improve urban infrastructure
•
• advance health informatics
•
• engineer better informatics
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• reverse-engineer the brain
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• prevent nuclear terror
•
• secure cyberspace
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• enhance virtual reality
•
• advance personalized learning
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• engineer the tools for scientific discovery
•
This point could be a great opportunity to expound on the necessity of shared commitment with scientists to resolve these and other difficult challenges in the world. Instead, Petroski chooses the last several words of the chapter to call attention to the fact that “the up-front verbs used in the bulleted list of challenges are not the scientific verbs of discovery and understanding; they are active calls for creative achievement. They say ‘engineer’ and they challenge engineering.”

Never mind that these challenges were developed by the National Academy of Engineering.

Ultimately, the relevance of the topic and the richness of the stories of The Essential Engineer make it an important book in a relatively small niche market of popularizing engineering literature. Petroski’s message rings a tune that a technologically-dependent society needs to hear. And despite a grudging tone suggesting deep wounds on an ego inflicted by a society that would rather side with the playground bullies of science fame and prestige than mettle with the tinkerers of worthy widgets and practical panache, Petroski’s message comes across loud and clear:

Engineers are essential, yes.