Science and Engineering Ethics (2001) 7, 105-115Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2001 105Keywords: engineering worldview, environmental education, cross-cultural studies, technothinkABSTRACT: Experience with a group of mechanical engineering seniors at theUniversity of Colorado led to an informal experiment with engineering students inIndia. An attempt was made to qualitatively gauge the students’ ability to appreciate aworldview different from the standard engineering worldview—that of a mechanicaluniverse. Qualitative differences between organic and mechanical systems were usedas a point of discussion. Both groups were found to exhibit distinct thought andbehavior patterns which provide important clues for sensitizing engineers toenvironmental issues in future educational initiatives. Cross-cultural and globaldimensions of these initiatives are discussed.I. INTRODUCTIONOne of the wonders of human communication is the ability to capture in a word, so tospeak, the consciousness of an age. The term “green” is one of these magical words.One can think of few symbols in literature, or even in folklore, that have had as muchimpact on the imagination and consciousness of entire societies around the world inrecent times as this simple word. The word itself represents a rather wide and looselydefined spectrum of thought, attitudes, philosophy and practice, centered around thecommon theme of concern for and protection of the environment.Address for correspondence: Ali Ansari, Centre for Holistic Learning and Development, 22/ASundaram Layout, Ramanathapuram, Coimbatore 641045, India; [email protected] (email).Paper received, 10 February 2000: revised, 1 August 1999: accepted, 10 July 2000.1353-2452 © 2001 Opragen Publications, POB 54, Guildford GU1 2YF, UK. http://www.opragen.co.ukThe Greening of Engineers:A Cross-Cultural ExperienceAli Ansari, Centre for Holistic Learning and Development, IndiaA. Ansari106 Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2001As might be expected, this spectrum represents different shades of “green”. At theone end are the “deep ecologists” with a worldview that would be considered radical bymany people—both in its analysis of environmental problems and the proposedsolutions. This group calls for a fundamental reorientation of values, goals, prioritiesand life style to make human society blend in with Earth’s ecology. At the other end ofthe green spectrum are the growing numbers of people all over the world whoseconcern for the state of the environment has caused them to call technology intoaccount—but only in this particular area. This shade of green consciousness andopinion would have technology manage its impact, without necessarily modifying itsoverall pattern of development.In the middle of this spectrum is a sizable body of thought associated with themainstream environmental movement as represented by the Sierra Club, for example,which opposes the present pattern of development, calling into question the very notionof development as a good in itself. It envisions instead a stable, sustainable societysupported by “technology with a human face”, made up of small decentralized systems.In its theoretical forms this line of thought questions not only the philosophy but alsothe sensibility of modern industrial and post-industrial society, reflected in ever-increasing consumption levels and demands for higher standards of living as a meansto a better life.1, 2“Green Thought” as represented by mainstream environmental thinking, may thusbe said to constitute a worldview which may be contrasted with the mainstream viewof engineers on a variety of fundamental questions. For example the “greenworldview” assumes ecology to be a basic theoretical and empirical discipline ratherthan an offshoot of other fundamental branches of science. The engineering worldview,on the other hand, either implicitly or explicitly uses physics and chemistry as the basictheoretical and practical framework for problem solving. The two contrastingframeworks—organic and mechanistic—often lead to fundamentally differentperceptions, analyses and solutions of environmental problems at the interface ofengineering and the environment.The interface between green philosophy and classical engineering theory andpractice is only just beginning to form, largely in response to the pressure on industryto conform to environmental laws and standards. As such, the considerations have beenmore or less piecemeal and in no way amount to a revision of fundamental assumptionsas called for by a green critique of western science and technology.There is another basic difficulty. Characteristically, the philosophical assumptionsof engineering are implicit in its theory and practice and can only be intuitivelydeduced. They are not necessarily synonymous with the implicit assumptions ofscience, on which a considerable body of analytical and philosophical literature exists.3With the development of quantum mechanics, science, or at least physics, has becomemuch less rigid in its descriptions of things. Notions of causality, locality, etc. havebecome increasingly difficult to pin down. However these theoretical problems andtheir philosophical implications have remained purely academic matters. The gulfbetween the physical and the life sciences has tended to become wider rather thannarrower, except for certain esoteric interface areas. This gulf is dramatized in theThe Greening of Engineers: A Cross-Cultural ExperienceScience and Engineering Ethics, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2001 107encounter between engineering and green philosophy, as a result of the domination ofengineering by the ethos of classical physics.As reported in this paper, I did not attempt to systematically gauge or quantify thereactions of students to the green viewpoint. Rather, I simply made it a point to allowthe students to express themselves on a variety of social and philosophical issuesrelated to the impact of technology. The green point of view was presented as a basisfor discussion. As it turned out, teaching experiences with two very different groups ofstudents yielded a harvest of valuable data, so it is not entirely inappropriate to labelthem experiments in retrospect.The first group was a class of mechanical engineering seniors at the University ofColorado at Denver. The second consisted of final year mechanical engineeringstudents at Kumaraguru College of Technology, a small private