Religious and Political Values and the Engineering Ethos

Christelle Didier· 1

Chapter 24

Religious and Political Values and the Engi-

neering Ethos1.

Christelle Didier

Abstract: In this chapter, I propose to examine the relationship between engineers‟

political views (leanings as well as interest) and some of the issues discussed in the

field of engineering ethics. I will also examine the relationship between religious

commitment (belief and practice) and such issues. This reflection is based on the

findings from a study that included 3901 French graduate engineers2. Although the

survey on “Engineers, Science and Society” (ESS) is more relevant in its national

context, it contributes to supporting three ideas that are worth considering outside of

France: firstly, engineering ethics is neither independent of political persuasion nor

of religious values; secondly, there is a need for a more sociologically informed

approach to engineering ethics; thirdly, this may have some implications for the

teaching of ethics to engineers.

Key words: religion, politics, values, engineering ethics.

Introduction

Engineering ethics (as it has developed within professional organisations and

in engineering education) has not been discussed a great deal in the field of

social science, not even in the field of Science and Technology Studies. It

has been mostly discussed, especially in the US where it is developed more,

by professionals first, and then by professionals and philosophers involved in

collaborative projects, mainly since the very end of the 1970s.

1 A special thanks to Mia Farlane and Jen Schneider for proofreading the last version

of this paper. 2 This survey served as the main field research in the project I conducted to obtain

my PhD in sociology. The methodological choices and means used to constite the

pool can be found in Didier 2008b, 47-50. Some key sociodemographics describing

the respondents of the EES survey and those of the CNISF national survey on

engineers conducted at the same time can be found in the appendix.

2 · Religious and Political Values and the Engineering Ethos

However, one of the first recognised authorities in engineering ethics,

American philosopher Robert Baum, noticed in the early 1980s that the spe-

cific social characteristics of engineers had better be taken into account when

designing engineering ethics courses. He described the engineer as male

(which is still often the case), ill at ease with expressing feelings, in search

of the one best way - even when dealing with moral problems - and perceiv-

ing engineering as a male profession (Baum 1980). Unfortunately, Baum‟s

insights regarding a better understanding of the relationships between social

factors such as gender (and also social class) and ethical competences (skill,

behaviour and also knowledge) were not put to use; there was no study made

concerning the impact of the psychological features of this population on its

values and ethical attitudes.

More recently, the American philosopher Michael Davis a specialist in

professional ethics, put specific questions to social scientists (Davis 1998,

172). He would have liked them to draw a line between those who might be

considered engineers and those who might not, in the same way as Karl

Popper drew a line between sciences, non-sciences and pseudo-sciences

(Popper, 1963). Indeed, social scientists could contribute to a better under-

standing of some issues discussed in the field of engineering ethics, but the

specific demarcationist approach proposed by Davis may not be the only

way to build bridges between engineering ethics and social sciences.

I have already examined the relationship between gender, age and engi-

neering ethics in another work which is still in process. This chapter will

focus on two aspects of the engineers‟ value system(s): political values and

religious values. I will describe the relationship between the political and

religious attitudes of the respondents to the survey, and their attitude toward

engineering ethics issues.

A large part of literature in engineering ethics focuses on the fact that

technology and engineering are not value-neutral sciences. Langdon Winner

asked if artefacts had politics (Winner 1986). The question addressed in this

chapter is: do engineers have politics? And, then to take this further, what

are the links between engineers‟ politics and their ethics? Lynn White argued

in a famous article, published in Science in 1967, that the anthropocentric

worldview due to Christianity was the main cause for environmental

degradation, a growing topic of interest within engineering ethics. This

chapter also deals with the religious attitude of engineers, and questions their

influence on the individual engineer‟s view of ethics in their profession.

A clarification is needed here. What one considers a question “related to

engineering ethics issues” may differ from one person to another, or from

one scholar to another. I know that there are questions other than those I

asked in my survey and topics other than the few I analyse in this chapter

that may seem crucial – and therefore missing – to some readers. This

chapter does not aim to be conclusive regarding the links between politics,

religion, and engineering ethics. Its aim is to pose questions and give a better


recognition to the importance of the intersections between religion, politics,

and engineering ethics. The idea defended here is that engineering ethics is

neither politically value-free and nor free of religious values.

One obvious limitation of this chapter is its purely national focus. Since

the 3901 engineers who answered my survey graduated from French engi-

neering schools, the reflection on the engineers‟ religious attitude focuses

solely on Catholicism. The number of respondents belonging to other relig-

ions was too low to enable reliable statistics. Also, because of the national

context of the survey, the political affiliation of the respondent is measured

using a left-right one-dimensional scale that is a standard in France. Al-

though this scale is a common way of classifying political positions, it may

not mean much in other countries where multi-dimensional spectra are more

commonly used in political sciences, such as in the USA.

Engineering ethics and politics

The interest of French engineers in politics has already been discussed far

from the world of engineering ethicists, in the field of political sciences. One

of the main surveys to be quoted dates back to 1979 (Grunberg and Mouri-

aux 1979). This survey did not concern only graduate engineers but also

other types of managers (“cadres” in the French survey). The sample was

composed of graduates from business schools, universities, as well as auto-

didacts. All of them were, at the time of the survey, employed as engineers,

managers (middle or upper), or executives in various companies.

In most surveys dealing with political interest, men seem to be more con-

cerned than women. Generally speaking, it also appears that the more people

are educated (i.e. the more they have studied), the more they express their

interest in politics. All over the world, graduate engineers are mostly male

and they are among the most educated in their generation. This was the case

in 1979 in France, but surprisingly, in Grunberg and Mouriaux‟s survey,

graduate engineers did not appear to be very concerned with politics. They

were less interested than the other cadres of the sample, especially those

who had a university background (under-graduates as well as graduates and

postgraduates). Engineers also expressed less interest in politics than their

colleagues who went to business schools. Although this result is not very

surprising, it motivated me to investigate further the relationship between

politics and engineers.


Table 1. Interest for politics in Grunberg and Mouriaux‟s Survey Percentage of the respondents “interested in politics”, according to their level of

education (number of year, and kind of education). Reading : 70% of the cadres who

hold a bacchelor‟s degree answered that they were very interested or rather inter-

ested in politics.

Political orientation

One finding of the survey on “engineers, science and society” (ESS) is

that graduate engineers rarely occupy extreme positions on the political

scale. This scale was composed of seven ranks: 1 for “far left”, 7 for “far

right”. Only 0.7% of the respondents of the ESS sample chose either 1

(0.3%) or 7 (0.4%). The main choice was “5” called here “centre right”

(chosen by 33% of them), followed by “4: centre” (24.5%) and then, “3:

centre left” (20.7%). Globally speaking, we can see that over one-fourth of

the respondents is left wing (1, 2 and 3), one-fourth of them occupy the cen-

tre (4) and less than half of them is right wing (5, 6 and 7), most of them

holding a “centre right” position (5).

Over the last few decades, political scientists have noted a shift to the left

wing of the group called cadres3 in France (Bouffartigue et Gadéa 2000,

102). While its members were traditionally voting for right-wing candidates,

they have started voting in the same way as the non-executive employees.

Actually, in the ESS survey, the youngest respondents (under 30 years old)

are more likely to identify as left-wing than are other engineers. But can a

3 For a better understanding of this social category and of its birth in France, see

Boltanski 1987.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Primary school

CAP vocational education,

after primary

school

BEP vocational education,

after middle school

Upper secondary

school

Bacchelor Engineering (Master’s

degree)

Business School

(Master’s

degree)

PhD

5 years 10 11 12 15 17 17 20 years at school


single survey allow us to conclude that this result is to do with the particular

age group of the respondents or that it depends on their belonging to a spe-

cific generation?

Table 2. Engineers‟s political attitude (ESS sample) on the 7 ranks scale.

Far Left

0,3

Left

6,2

Centre Left

20,7Center

24,5

Center Right

33

Right

10,4

Far right

0,4

No

answ er

4,2

Two facts may enforce the generational explanation. Firstly, the increas-

ing number of graduate engineers has led them to identify less strongly with

the nation‟s elite. Secondly, the gender and social diversification of the engi-

neering schools‟ recruitment may also partially explain the shift of the pro-

fession towards the left. Actually, engineering schools today are composed

of more girls4 and also more students coming from low-middle class rather

than upper-middle class origins. At the same time, the share of the engineers

graduated from university programmes, which are less socially selective than

the engineering schools, has increased.

Another finding is that the engineers‟ political orientation depends on

their main professional activity. 50% percent of the respondents who work

as civil servants and 46% of those who work in the field of education iden-

tify as left wing. Conversely, 61% of those who are managing directors, 56%

of those are in the field of production, 54% of those who are executives, and

50% of those who work as commercial engineers identify as right wing.

Since the share of engineers working for public services and in education is

rather low (4% and 3% respectively), their influence on the profession‟s

political view is also negligible. Another influencing factor is the profes-

sional sector: the respondents working in the field of construction or agricul-

ture (who operate in small firms based on old technologies) are more likely

to be right-wingers. Those who work for the state or local government and in

the field of communication technologies and computing, (often in large or

high-tech companies) are more likely to be left-wingers.

4 Usually women are more likely to be at the right side of the political scales, but

this is not the case of most female engineers, especially the younger ones. Engineer-

ing is still seen as a male profession, therefore their parents are less likely to be

conservative than the males‟ parents… and political orientation is, for the most part,

a question of family socialisation (Didier 2008b, 109).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7


Interest in politics

The first finding about political interest suggests that engineers are more

likely to express their interest in politics than other French people. While

54% of the respondents declare that they are interested in politics (“some-

what” or “very”), this is the case for only 37% of the French people aged 18

and over (Riffault 1994, 167). This finding is all the less surprising given

that the more people are educated - and the older they are - the more likely

they are to declare their interest in politics. The French sample used by

Hélène Riffault is composed of younger people (from 18 and over, while the

younger ESS respondents are 23 years old). It is also composed of many

people who are less educated than the in ESS sample, which is composed of

graduate engineers only. The French sample is also composed half of women

and half of men, whereas only 13% of the ESS respondents are women. And

women are usually considered as less engaged in politics than men5.

We need to go into more detail to understand the relationships between

engineers and politics. First we note that the respondents who are most inter-

ested in politics belong to two separate groups: the civil servants on one

hand and the top managers and directors, closely followed by the executives,

on the other hand. This result tends to confirm Pierre Bourdieu‟s thesis that

those who express a high interest in politics are those for whom it can be

beneficial as individuals (Bourdieu 2005). Indeed civil servants are more

involved in political decision-making than other engineers: they are directly

concerned by politics in their work. Also, those who work at the highest

levels of management in private companies are very concerned with political

decision-making because those decisions may impact on their business.

What about the other engineers? They seem to be more concerned than

many less educated people. But, only 13% of those who are employed by a

private company declare being “very interested” in politics, while this is the

case for 9% of the respondents in the national sample of French men and

women over 18. It must also be stressed that to state that one is interested in

politics is a highly subjective answer; it has to do with how one sees oneself

or wants to be seen. For some people, to state a lack of interest would be

embarrassing. Engineers, because they occupy an enviable social position,

have to be interested in politics. This is even truer for men, because the so-

cial pressure is stronger on them than on women.

Another finding from the ESS survey is that the less the respondent feels

free to make decisions at work, the less likely he or she is to say s/he is in-

terested in politics. This feeling is clearly linked to the objective level of

5 In fact, men and women have different ways of thinking about political interest as

Debra Horner shows in her researches (Horner 2008).


responsibility of the respondent. But, as Hélène Riffault has shown, it is even

more linked to the degree of satisfaction at work whatever the position on

the social and professional ladder (Riffault 1994, 101). If male and graduate

respondents are very likely to report a higher level of interest in politics, if

engineers express a great degree of work satisfaction, as observed in many

surveys, that only 13 % of the respondents say they are “very interested” in

politics may seems rather low.

Political attitudes, business ethics and engineering ethics

A strong majority of ESS survey respondents (74%) believes that „„engi-

neers should commit themselves to contributing towards transforming socie-

ty”. The most interested in politics and those who are active in several

organizations strongly agree with this statement. The majority of those who

disagree are right wing. If we look more closely at the results, we note that

those who agree are more numerous among the ”centre left wingers”, than

among ”centre right wingers”, and than among both extremist groups (rank 1

and rank 7). The three other options come only after.

The answers given by engineers appear paradoxical regarding political

commitment and support for unionism. They consider that their profession

should be better represented in public debate, but they also declare that being

an engineer is not compatible with a political commitment and only 6%

declare that they hold a political commitment (at a local, regional or national

level). They answer that unionism is not incompatible with being an

engineer, but only 7% of them are actually members of a trade-union (or are

elected members in order to represent their colleagues and co-workers within

their company)6. In fact, they declare that to be involved in a trade union is

very bad for one‟s career. Surprisingly or not, this idea of incompatibility is

less prevalent among the engineers who are themselves trade-unionists. It is

also less prevalent among the youngest respondents. Two hypotheses can be

proposed : the first one is that over time the young engineers will come to

understand that direct commitment is not possible for them. A more

optimistic hypothesis would be that the younger generation is more willing

to commit itselves actively than the older generation.

Most business ethics handbooks quote Milton Friedman‟s famous saying

about the social responsibility of corporation officials: to make as much

money for the stockholders as possible (Friedman 1962, 133). No one will

be surprised to learn that the engineers‟ attitudes towards this position are

inextricably linked to their political stand: while 60% of the engineers in

position 6 and 7 on the political scale agree with Friedman, this is true for

6 For a better understanding of engineers‟ unionism in France, see Didier 1999.


only 30% of the engineers who are in position 1, 2, or 3. Another statement

proposed in the questionnaire was: “do you consider it justifiable for a com-

pany to lay off employees when it is making a profit?” Most left-wing engi-

neers disagree (65%) while this is the case for only 32% of the respondents

who are at the very right side of the scale (6 and 7). Finally, while only 17%

of the left-wingers agree with the idea that “ethics concern solely well-off

companies”, this is the case for 29% of the right-wingers.

The great majority of the respondents, from the right to the left side of the

political scale, appear to be more technophilic than other citizens. It is no

surprise that engineers have more faith in technology and in scientific exper-

tise. But their political sensitivities bring some additional nuances to their

opinions, especially regarding the relationship between engineering and so-

ciety. Those who identify as right wing are more optimistic and more likely

to think that technology brings more good than harm to society. They are

also more likely to trust that technology can solve the problems caused by

technology. Those who identify as left wing, express more scepticism re-

garding the way private companies deliver public information around issues

such as risk and safety. They value more than the other engineers the stirring

up of public debate on technological problems and controversies, and they

are more likely to agree with a greater democratisation of technological deci-

sion-making.7

Implications for ethics education

In 1992, Michael Loui wrote: “from the engineer's point of view, politics

is a messy business. (...) Why would an engineer want to participate?” (Loui

1992). Much earlier, French hisorian Bruno Jacomy analysed the early days

of the older French engineering professional organization, the Société

centrale des ingénieurs civils. He stated that its members were clearly

avoiding all political discussions and prefered to place emphasis on the

scientific and technical vocation of their professional society (Jacomy 1984).

One of the findings of the ESS survey was that the more engineers are in-

volved with technology (rather than management) in their work, the less

likely they are to be interested in politics. Yet, many graduate engineers are

engaged in mainly technical activities, especially at the beginning of their

career, but also until retirement in most cases. Wouldn‟t it be an ethical

problem if we were surrounded by artifacts ”with politics” designed by

engineers who would believe that their actions on the world is a politically-

free, value-free activity?

7 For more detail on the topics adressed in this last paragraph, see Didier 2008b,

126-132. I could explore this last finding in more detail, but it would unfortunately

cause this paper to exceed the expected length.


If the ESS survey does not fully answer the question: “do engineers actually

lack an interest in politics?” – no survey could entirely achieve this, in any

case – it does go some way towards discerning some links between the po-

litical attitude of the individual engineers and some matters central to the

field of engineering ethics. There are most probably various ways of encour-

aging engineering ethics among professionals and in education, and those

various ways are not politically value-free. If the answer to the question “Do

engineering ethics have politics?” is yes, we can expect all those who con-

tribute to the engineering ethics forum to be more explicit as concerns the

political dimension or implication of their reflexions or proposals. Moreover,

if engineering ethics have politics and if engineers are not very interested in

politics, engineering ethics education needs, more than ever, to deal with the

links between technology and politics.

Engineering ethics and engineers‟ religious attitudes

Two main reasons led me to include the topic of religion in my question-

naire. Firstly, when examining the development of engineering ethics educa-

tion in France, I highlighted two dominant models: one of them was the so-

cial catholic one, the other was the “encyclopaedic” or academic one. One of

the findings of this research was that questioning religious background

helped bring about a better understanding as to why and how engineering

ethics courses developed in higher education. Later on, while looking into

environmental issues, I came across Lynn White‟s thesis According to him,

Christianity, more than any other religion and more than atheism, is respon-

sible for the destruction of our natural environment (1967). Although

White‟s work was criticised and contested, it seemed to me that it might be

of interest to look at both ethical attitude and religious attitude in my survey.

In my previous research, I found that engineering ethics courses proposed

in catholic engineering schools often originated in the heritage of the social

teachings of the Catholic Church. At the very end of the nineteenth century,

one Jesuit chaplain, in the context of the encyclical Rerum Novarum, initi-

ated a reflection on the “social mission of the engineer” (le rôle social de

l’ingénieur). Soon after, the catholic engineers’ social ideology spread

widely among the engineering community (beyond the Catholic milieu), and

this continued until the middle of the twentieth century. Georges Lamirand

wrote a very successful book, republished several times, entitled le role

social de l’ingénieur. He believed that engineers should serve as mediators

between workers and employers and possibly eliminate the conflicts between

them. As a consequence of this heritage, the actual courses offered in catho-

lic schools are more often social, business or professional ethics courses than


courses based on human and social sciences or linked to the field of Science,

Technology and Society.

Engineering ethics courses, when offered in public state engineering schools,

usually follow another model. They identify with the “encyclopaedic” or

academic ideal of the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique, where literature – and

more recently philosophy – has always been part of the teaching programme

along with sciences since the eighteenth century. Those courses dealing with

engineering ethics issues (and they are rarely labelled as such) focus less on

the individual duties and obligations of engineers, than on the social com-

plexity of technological decisions. In the schools which follow this model,

such courses may include a great deal of epistemology or philosophy of sci-

ence, and more recently sociology of sciences and technology, as well as

sociology of organisations.

If religious background has an influence on the design of courses dealing

with engineering ethics, it may also influence the individual engineer‟s per-

ception and understanding of the ethical issues of engineering. “Are Catho-

lics more socially responsible and less environmentally active because of

their ideological heritage?” was one of the questions that I became interested

in when analysing the ESS survey.

Engineers’ religious attitudes today

Most engineers declare having a religion: 77% of them identify as Catho-

lic, 3% as another religion. This is very similar to what we found in most

national surveys: in 1995, 75% of the French population declared being

close to Catholicism (CEVIPOF 1995). Some surveys use a filter question.

First, the respondents are asked if they consider themselves religious. Only

then do they indicate the religion to which they belong. In such surveys, only

62 % of the French respondents declared having a religion in 1990, and 58 %

in 1999 (Riffault 1994, Bréchon 2000).

Table 3. Engineers‟ religious practice (ESS sample)


Regular practice

22%

Hardly at all or no

practice

28%

Other religion

3%

"secular humanist"

20%

Ceremonies only

16%

Occasional

practice

11%

Catholics

Regular practising Catholics represent a rather important proportion of

the ESS sample (22%). According to the definition used by French sociolo-

gists, a “regular practicing Catholic” is someone who goes to church at least

once a month. Nowadays, in France, which is one of the less religious coun-

tries of Western Europe, those who go to church weekly are too few to be

studied separately in a national survey. The great majority of the Catholics in

the ESS sample are “more or less” – or even “not at all” – practising, and

20% of the respondents said they had no religion. In comparison, only 12%

of the French sample used by Pierre Bréchon declared having a “regular”

religious practice (Bréchon 2000).

Three factors contribute to explaining the difference between the two

samples. The first factor is that engineers belong to the upper-middle- and

upper class whose members are more likely to be practising than those of the

working class. The second notable factor is that the French national sample,

as explained earlier in this chapter, is composed of a younger population

(people 18 and over), whereas the ESS sample is composed of graduate en-

gineers 23 and over. Since the younger generation is less practising than the

older generation, this difference between the samples can go some way to-

wards explaining the difference in the degree of practice. Finally, the ESS

sample is composed of engineers who graduated from engineering schools

situated in the north of France and the proportion of catholic schools is

greater in this region than in all the other French regions. Engineers who are

graduates of catholic schools are more likely to be catholic themselves: for

instance, 38% of the engineers who come from the Institut Catholique d’Arts

et Métiers (ICAM, a very old school run by Jesuits) are regular practising

Catholics, while this is the case for only 5% of those who come from the


Ecole Universitaire D‟Ingénieurs de Lille (EUDIL, a public state school

which is not very socially elitist).8

Demographics of the French Catholic engineers

What are the differences between practising catholic engineers and the

rest of the population, and also what is the difference between those who are

regularly practising and non-believers, whom I call in my work, using the

term favoured by Yves Lambert (in Riffault 1994, 133) and Sylvette Denèfle

(1997), the “secular humanist”9? First, regularly practising catholic engi-

neers and secular humanists have in common the fact that they come from

upper and upper-middle class origins. The hardly at all- or non-practising

Catholics come from middle or even working class families and their fathers

are less educated than those of the engineers belonging to the two first

groups. Also, the largest proportion of families where both parents left

school after primary school is among the group of the hardly at all- and non-

practising Catholics.

What differentiates the members of the regularly practising Catholics

from the secular humanists has to do with the family model: the family of

origin as well as the one they create. Secular humanists are more likely to

have a mother and a father who studied at university while the most common

family model among the regular Catholics is composed of a father who went

to university and a mother who is a high school graduate. Another difference

worth noting: while 48% of the regularly practising Catholic engineers have

a wife (or a husband, though less likely) who do not work outside of the

house, this is the case for only 21% of the secular humanist engineers. Regu-

lar practising and secular humanists do not come from the same family

types, and they also do not build the same kind of families: regular practising

Catholics have more children, they are much more often married that the

secular humanists, and less often divorced, although engineers are very sel-

dom single (this is true for men only: 98% of them are living in couples).

8 One factor that does not explain at all the differences between the answers given by

the two samples is the gender. Engineers who are mainly male, would be expected to

be less religious than a sample of French people composed of half men half women

because male are supposed to be less religious than women. In fact, in the ESS sur-

vey, this is not the case, and not only because women are younger than men. Even

among the respondents who are under 40, men are more religious than women. 9Lambert and Denèfle prefers to talk about the secular humanist rather than the

“non”-believers in order to describe people by what they are rather than by what

they are not, and because most people who describe themselves as non-believers

share what those authors call “secular humanist” values.


When defining success in the questionnaire, engineers rank first in order

of importance “to have an interesting job” (80%), then “to live a balanced

home life” (65%), followed by “to bring up one or several children” (58%).

The two next choices are “to earn a lot of money” and “to be active in a cul-

tural, social or political field”: they are both chosen by 19% of the respon-

dents. While regular practising catholic engineers and secular humanists

make the same first choice, the order of the two next choices is reverse: for

the regular practising Catholics, bringing up children comes before having a

balanced home life. Then we can note that “earning a lot of money” is twice

as less likely to be chosen by the practising Catholics than by the secular

humanists and “to be active in a cultural, social or political field” is more

frequently chosen by the practising Catholics than by the secular humanists.

The two last choices are strongly linked to the age of the respondents. The

younger respondents declare a preference for the desire to earn money, while

the older respondents place greater value on social and political commit-

ment.

Religious adherence and moral attitude

Not only do the members of the two groups rank slightly differently what

it is they consider important in life, but also their opinion on how to distin-

guish between right and wrong, in moral life, is dissimilar. While 36% of the

practising Catholics believe that there are clear guidelines that can be fol-

lowed in any circumstances, this is the opinion of only 14% of the secular

humanists. More than half of them believe that discerning right from wrong

depends entirely on the circumstances. The proportion of those who consider

that neither of the proposals is correct is almost the same in both groups (a

little more than one third of both groups).

Some statements proposed in the questionnaire are were more accepted

by respondents who were Catholics and regularly practicing. This is the case

with: “a code of ethics for the engineering profession would help with mak-

ing decisions in difficult situations”. It is also the case with: “pursuing a

research project that may violate some moral principles should not be al-

lowed”. In another part of the questionnaire, the respondents had to say if

they considered it justifiable (by choosing in a 7 ranks-scale, with 1 for

“fully justifiable”, and 7 “not at all”) to make public confidential information

belonging to their company concerning a security problem. The proportion

of those who consider this act unjustifiable (ranks 6 and 7) is all the more

important where the respondents are Catholics and practising: 40% of the

regularly practising chose 6 or 7 on the scale, and only 25 % of the secular

humanists (28% of them chose 1 or 2).

But on other matters, the secular humanists and the regularly practising

Catholics agree with each other, while their position is dissimilar to that of

the hardly at all and non-practicing Catholics. In this category, we can quote


“ethics concern solely well-off companies”. Even if the proportion of the

regularly practicing Catholics who disagree is greater than that of the secular

humanists, both are more significant than the proportion of the hardly at all

and non-practicing Catholics. Also, the regularly practising Catholics and the

secular humanist both disagree much more strongly with the statement

which says that the only social responsibility of companies is to make prof-

its, than the other groups. Finally, in both groups, the proportion of those

who consider it justifiable (ranks 1 and 2, on the 7 ranks-scale) for an indi-

vidual to refuse to take part in one of the projects of the company for per-

sonal reasons is more than one third. This proportion is more significant than

among the hardly at all and non-practising Catholics. Still, the group for

which this proportion is the most significant is from among the regularly

practising Catholics who are also members of a religious group. It is even

greater among those who also consider that religious authorities should be

listened to when deciding which technologies should be developed or not.

What attitudes are specific to Catholic engineers?

We can conclude from these last figures that on some matters which are

very central to engineering ethics – such as the need for professional ethics

guidelines for the individual, the ability to refrain from some technological

development for moral reasons, and the right to conscientious objection – the

engineers‟ positions are inextricably linked to their religious adherence. We

can also note that for some other central topics in engineering ethics – such

as defending a wider definition of social responsibility than that of only

making profits, such as the need of business ethics guidelines for companies,

such as the duty to blow the whistle if needed – regularly practising Catho-

lics have more in common with secular humanists than with hardly at all or

non-practising Catholics. It seems that, on those matters, having a clear posi-

tion regarding religion, whether for or against, is more important than the

choice in itself: engineers who have a clear attitude towards religion have in

common their sensitivity towards “social ethics”. In contrast, the most de-

terminant factor regarding these matters is religious practice: the more engi-

neers are religious (Catholic, here) the more likely they are to place high

importance on individual ethics and moral principles.

“Are Catholics too technophilic?”: this was one of the questions that

motivated me to look at both religion practice and ethical attitude in my re-

search. One finding of the ESS survey is that regularly practising Catholics

are not great supporters of environmental organizations, nor do they support

activists against nuclear or genetically modified organisms. This type of

commitment (political activism) is perhaps not their preferred means of ex-

pressing their interest regarding a particular issue. Still, we can note that the

strongest influence of the Catholic practice on the rejection of a social

movement (in the questionnaire) concerns “environmental movements”. To


conclude on that topic, engineers are in general quite optimistic about tech-

nological development, all the more so when they are Catholic and church-

goers. Maybe because they don‟t share the same understanding of what sci-

ence is: those who are regularly practising and who are also members of a

religious group are twice as likely to define science by “what enables man to

have a better life”.

Table 4. Correlations between the level of religious practice and the political

attitude of the respondents (EES sample)

Conclusion

Engineering ethics is a young field in the academic world, not yet mature.

Many definitions can be given to this concept, from the most prescriptive

when focusing on the codes of ethics, to the most descriptive and supposedly

“neutral” when focusing on engineering values. In this chapter, I have fo-

cused on some aspects of the engineering ethos and tried to show some links

between ethical attitudes and two fields of values that are essential in human

life in society: politics and religion. My aim is neither to say that a left-wing

– or right-wing – engineering ethos is better than the opposite, nor that

catholic engineers have a better understanding of ethical issues than secular

humanists.

I wish to encourage – especially when thinking about teaching implica-

tions – a greater awareness of the fact that the contents and methodologies

chosen in the field of engineering ethics are not politically neutral. Ethics

and politics are different but they are closely related, especially in engineer-

ing because there are so many social consequences. Ethics is not religion-

free either, because whether people are religious or not has an influence on

the way each person sees ethics in her or his personal as well as in profes-

sional life. But what is apparent also is that on some matters, the engineers

who have a clear position towards Catholicism, whether secular or religious,

Religion Catholics

Secular

Humanist

Practice

Regular Occa-

sional

Only

Cere-

monies

Hardly

at all

or no

Left , far left (1,2) 2 3 4 6 18

Center Left (3) 11 15 16 23 37

Centre (4) 25 25 21 30 22

Centre Right (5) 45 42 47 32 18

Right , far right (6,7) 17 14 13 9 6

Total 100 100 100 100 100


share similar views, and are opposed to the “cultural Catholics” because of a

shared “sense of responsibility” for the world around them. Thus, I would

conclude in encouraging educator to develop the students‟ interest for poli-

tics and to invite them to make clear their position towards religion. oth can

contribute to the students‟ capacities in the field of engineering ethics.

Appendix: Some sociodemographics of the ESS sample compared to the

CNISF national sample (CNISF 2001).

Age ESS CNISF

Under 30 18 % 24 %

30-39 37 % 37 %

40-49 22 % 21 %

50-59 16 % 17 %

60 and more 7 % 5 %

Total 100 100

Gender ESS CNISF

Male 85 % 83 %

Female 14 % 16 %

Total 100 100

Main activity ESS CNISF

Production, manufacturing, construction 12.5 % 10 %

Logistic, quality, security, organisation, environment 15 % 9 %

Research and development 24 % 37 %

Computing, network 16 % 17 %

Sales, technico-commercial 12.5 % 7 %

Admin. : finance, legal, communication or human resources 4 % 3 %

Direction (of a company or a factory) 11% 9 %

Public sector administration 1% 2 %

Teaching, training 3 % 3 %

Other 1 % 3 %

Total 100 100

Activity sector of the company ESS CNISF

Industry, energy 41 % 35 %

Computing (service) 9 % 9 %

Food industry, agriculture 8 % 6 %

Commerce, distribution, transport 7 % 7 %

Telecommunications 7 % 4 %

Research department 6 % 10 %

Civil servant : state, region, hospital 4 % 4 %

Building, public works 4 % 4 %

Finance, bank, insurance 4 % 4 %

Non technical consulting, audit 4 % 8 %


Teaching 2 % 9 %

Other 2 % 9 %

Total 100 100

Size of the company ESS CNISF

No employee 1 % 1 %

Less than 20 employees 8 % 7 %

21 to 499 32 % 27 %

500 to 4 999 25 % 25 %

5000 and more 34 % 40 %

Total 100 100

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Religious and Political Values and the Engineering Ethos

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