Think ... About How Others Think. Liberal education and engineering

In her recent book Rosalind Williams argued that the engineering profession had lost its identity. She argued that in the long run engineers would have to face up to a long term convergence between technological and liberal arts education. One interpretation of Williams thesis is that if engineers do not accept a hybrid educational activity they will be consigned to purely technical activities. IBM' has created "a new academic discipline, called services science and management engineering" for such people as anthropologists, economists, sociologists who IBM has employed to help R and D engineering teams. IBM did not see as a philosophical issue. It is argued here that this is a philosophical issue. Some of the problems involved in the design of hybrid curricula are considered and examples given. Such models require that engineering students have contact with students from other disciplines and work in communities with them if they are to acquire an understanding of how people from other disciplines think. Essential to the success of these communities to what Newman called "enlargement of mind". This hybrid education would lead to engineers who have a "comprehensive mind" and "philosophical cast of thought".