This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Printed on acid-free paper The Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET) itself grew out of a series of Workshops on Philosophy and Engineering (WPE) that were initiated in 2006 when Mechanical Engineer Taft Broome at MIT, on sabbatical from Howard University in Washington, DC, convened a small group of engineers and philosophers. The aim was to consider approaches to promoting the engineering-philosophy interaction more vigorously than had been taking place in the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) and its biannual odd-year international conferences. Broome felt strongly that SPT was not sufficiently open to engineers and engineering. The next year, in the summer of 2007, the SPT conference hosted by the University of South Carolina invited Broome to present his ideas. In response, in the fall of 2007, philosophers and engineers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands organized and hosted the first WPE.In 2008, a second WPE was hosted by the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, followed with a WPE track at SPT 2009 at Twente University in the Netherlands. Discussions at WPE 2008 and others that followed, stimulated especially by the interests of Electrical Engineer David Goldberg from the University of Illinois, led to a modest reconfiguring of the effort. The result was the new fPET name and a commitment to organize biannual fPET conferences on even-numbered years as a complement to SPT conferences held on odd-numbered years. In fall 2010, the first fPET conference was hosted by the Hennebach Program in the Humanities at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. The current proceedings volume, although the first to appear in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, is thus the third in a related series. It is also the third in a series in the Boston Studies d...

Contrary to many other countries, in France, engineering education remains attractive. Paradoxically, French students do not seem to be motivated by the engineering profession and many graduates seem to have become engineers "by accident". The outcome of our research is that engineering students are "pushed" by an invisible parental and social pressure. The most successful ones end up in a very few prestigious schools, which are supposed to open the doors of the higher management positions in big private companies and public administration, the great majority in a school they have hardly heard about before the "concours", with little motivation for applied science, hardly any vocation for engineering. This work is at the crossroad of two developing approaches within the fields of educational sciences and sociology: the choice to study successful students belonging to the upper or upper middle class which are less investigated than lower classes, and the choice to adopt a qualitative approach, while most researches about orientation are based on wide quantitative surveys. Our aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the construction of the engineers' culture and ethos, through an analysis of the socialization process from the engineering students' point of view.