Science in Society: Petroleum Engineers and the Oil Fraternity in Texas,1925-65

Abstract

Despite the great attention lavished on science and technology by a diversity of academic disciplines and specialties, surprisingly little is known about the pre-eminent vectors for scientific knowledge and the foremost practitioners of technology — ordinary engineers. Elite (and therefore, by definition, unrepresentative) cases aside, what is known about engineers normally concerns either their aggregate numbers and gross levels of education, or their professional societies. The inquiry described here seeks to depict in somewhat richer detail one engineering discipline — petroleum engineering — and to examine in a general way how that discipline fits into the particular society of which it was a part. The point is simply that, far from being the one-dimensional `nerds' of stereotype, engineers are multi-dimensional social entities — and that, in constructing their roles in social action, who they are very likely matters every bit as much as what they know.