Engineers Must Embrace the Intellectual Virtues

David Brooks has a wonderful column in the New York Times August 29, 2014 edition - The Mental Virtues.  Even as the United States moves toward greater and greater anti-intellectualism, engineers would be wise to focus on our necessary cerebral virtues.  We are a thinking profession - we need more thinkers that measure up against the six virtues that Brooks outlined in his column list below:

1. There is a love of learning.  Some engineers are just more ardently curious than others.  This is either by cultivation or by nature.  In a world marked by a marketplace that demands and rewards "cheaper, faster, better" you need to be thinking in term of "longer, harder, smarter" - - A love of leaning is key to developing a longer, harder, smarter engineering world.
2. There is courage.  Engineers have problems with this one.  We lack intellectual courage - - knowing when to be daring and when to be cautious.  The world in full of wicked problems.  Climate change and global warming is one such wicked problem.  Engineering needs to get better at looking at things that are surprisingly hard to look at and have the intellectual courage to hold unpopular views.
3. There is firmness.  We need to find the median point between flaccidity and rigidity.  Engineers typically fall way too close to the rigid end of the spectrum.
4. There is humility.  Engineers excel at this virtue.  We don't let our desire for status get in the way of accuracy.  Like many other professions, we fight the inner demons of vanity and self-importance.  
5. There is autonomy.  Engineering autonomy is the median of knowing when to bow to authority and when not to, when to adhere to tradition and when not to.  We have a tendency to be too tradition bound.
6. There is generosity.  Engineers must become better listeners and teachers.  We are not the greatest knowledge sharers - - learn to hear others as they would like to be heard.

We concentrate way too much effort on developing an engineering body of knowledge.  Focusing instead on wisdom, character, and the six intellectual virtues outlined above would be more valuable in the long run.