242 Kline
ate testimony to argue for support of engineering science and to counter
the common, though erroneous idea, that “engineering is merely applied
science.”^67 Finch continued his attack in a 1951 book on the history of
engineering by observing that this idea had been “exaggerated by the
war experiences of some American scientifi c workers” and that it had an
“adverse effect in securing support for research in engineering science.”
Finch argued against this “propaganda of natural science,” as he called
it, by showing that the engineering profession greatly antedated mod-
ern science. Even in later periods, natural science did not provide all the
knowledge needed by engineers. Engineers then took over research into
the “engineering sciences” and developed them “in directions, scope, and
understandings which would not claim the interest, time, and efforts of
workers in pure science.” Finch aptly called the work of his colleagues
the “engineering science movement” of the early 1950s.^68 Similar state-
ments were made in 1951 by Morrough P. O’Brien, dean of engineering at
the University of California at Berkeley who had helped bring European
research on fl uid dynamics to the United States in the 1930s, and Andrey
Potter, dean of engineering at Purdue and a member of Bakhmeteff’s Com-
mittee on Engineering Sciences of the Engineers Joint Council.
Despite these efforts to defi ne the fi eld of engineering science, estab-
lish a pedigree for it, and show its importance to engineering practice, the
early directors of the NSF had diffi culty understanding the concept. Paul
Klopsteg, the fi rst director of the Division of Mathematical, Physical, and
Engineering Sciences and a professor of applied science on leave from
Northwestern University, perceived an “incongruity” between the defi ni-
tion of engineering as the art of applying science to useful ends and the
NSF’s statutory obligation to support the science of engineering. Klopsteg
attempted to resolve the dilemma by asserting that “research directed to-
ward methods and procedures of applying knowledge toward useful ends
is research as truly as that which seeks knowledge of science in the fi rst
instance.”^69 In the same year, Waterman approved Klopsteg’s approach as
a way to resolve his perceived “paradox” of engineering science and said
it was the basis for the NSF’s “program for supporting basic research in
engineering.”^70 Waterman and Klopsteg—both of whom were trained as
physicists—attempted to uphold a traditional pure- science ideal by defi n-
ing the goal of engineering research to be improved means of applying
“pure science” to practical problems, instead of the creation of “basic”
knowledge useful to engineering.
At fi rst the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) took
Bakhmeteff’s and Finch’s strong position on the autonomy of research
and teaching in engineering science, particularly in an infl uential report