The Introspective Engineer by Samuel C. Florman, and: The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel C. Florman

Abstract

1022 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE ceeded. He demonstrates Leonardo’s interest in cannon casting and shows that he applied his experience with artillery to the project of casting of the horse. Assuming two possible sizes, Rush offers a hypothetical reconstruction of the casting operation of the horse, including the furnaces, molds, and hoisting equipment. The remaining articles by Jack Wasserman, Hidemichi Tanaka, and Richard G. Polich concern, respectively, the history of replica­ tion of traditional sculptures; the Sforza monument reconstruction in Nagoya City,Japan; and current plans for reconstruction, includ­ ing technical data and problems. Clearly all the participants in this conference did not share Charles Dent’s avid enthusiasm for reconstructing the Sforza monu­ ment. Yet the volume is a rare example of a collected work that dis­ plays uniformly high standards of scholarship as well as coherence of subject matter. It is an exemplary interdisciplinary volume that brings Leonardo’s Sforza monument into clear focus as a nexus of ideas concerning aesthetics, technique, politics, and culture. Pamela O. Long Dr. Long is writing a book concerning openness, secrecy, and authorship in pre­ modern and early modern craft and technical traditions. The Introspective Engineer. By Samuel C. Florman. New York: St. Mar­ tin’s Press, 1996. Pp. xii+244; notes, index. $22.95 (cloth). The Existential Pleasures ofEngineering, 2d ed. By Samuel C. Florman. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Pp. xviii+205; notes. $11.95 (paper). Samuel Florman is a man in love with his profession. For more than twenty-five years he has been extolling the virtues of engi­ neering in a variety ofpublic forums. The growing “antitechnology” sentiment of the 1960s and 1970s spurred him to defend his field by writing The Existential Pleasures ofEngineering (his second book, first published in 1976), Blaming Technology (1981), and The Civilized Engineer (1986). The second edition of Existential Pleasures, under review here, is a reprint of the first edition, with two chapters from each of his next two books added as a postscript. In his latest offer­ ing, The Introspective Engineer, Florman continues his exuberant cheerleading in support of engineering’s qualities and potential. Florman describes Existential Pleasures as a “speculative essay” on the “nature of the engineering experience in our time” (p. ix). He argues that there is an inherentjoy to be found in practicing engi­ neering, a pleasure at once deeper and more basic than the powerful euphoria that comes from solving a difficult engineering problem. Engineering, Florman declares, satisfies humans’ “irresistible urge to dip our hands into the stuff of the earth and do something with it” (p. 104)—engineering is, in a word, existential. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1023 At heart, however, ExistentialPleasuresis a diatribe against antitech­ nology, which Florman defines as “the doctrine that holds technol­ ogy to be the root of all evil' (p. 45, emphasis in original). He takes as his sources five midcentury scholars whom he feels epitomize antitechnological sentiment: Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, René Dubos, Charles A. Reich, and Theodore Roszak. Florman sums up his refutation by declaring that “technology is not evil except when falsely described by dyspeptic philosophers” (p. 57). He asserts that antitechnologists are “determined to prove that life today is worse than it used to be” (p. 71) and responds by arguing that although life might not be better, it is hardly worse. He is quite right, I think, to claim that technology ought not be blamed for all of modern society’s ills, and his notion that “each new thing we do must be observed, maintained, and its consequences coped with” (p. 85) seems eminently reasonable. But Florman’s book lacks convincing proof on which to base his sweeping claims about the contributions of technology to world history. Historians, in particular, are likely to be bothered by several as­ sumptions Florman makes at the outset—for example, that “engi­ neers are the educated professionals who play a dominant role in technological development” (p. x). Such claims are all the more troubling when, several pages later, Florman himself declares that “engineers do not have the power to make major decisions for soci­ ety” and that “it is irrational to blame the engineer for...