The Existential Pleasures of Engineering

Humans have always sought to change their environment—building houses, monuments, temples, and roads. In the process, they have remade the fabric of the world into newly functional objects that are also works of art, feats to be not only used or experienced but admired and learned from. In this second edition of his popular Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Samuel Florman reports on how engineers think and feel about their profession.

An insightful and refreshingly unique text, this book corrects the myth that engineering is cold and passionless. Indeed, Florman celebrates engineering as every bit as vital, and every bit as alive, as it is crucial and fundamental; he views engineering as a response to some of our deepest impulses, an endeavor rich in spiritual and sensual rewards. Opposing the "anti-technology" stance, Florman gives readers a practical, creative, and even amusing philosophy of engineering that signals an ample degree of knowledge about—and pride in—his trade.