What does the field of engineering encompass?

What differentiates a software programmer to a software engineer?

An engineer is defined as someone who has an baccalaureate or degree, membership in a professional engineering society, registration as an engineer by a government agency, employment in a job requiring professional engineering work.

But what does "professional" mean? What authority does a single governmeny agency have over the definition of an engineer?

National Research Council proposed the definition of an engineer as someone who employs "mathematics and/or natural science [for] research, development, design, manufacturing, etc...".
But professions other than engineers also fall into this application of "mathematics and/or natural science"...


Past all this circumlocution, engineering has revolved around three elements

  1. The use of mathematics and natural science
  2. The involvement of physical objects and/or physical systems
  3. To build on the fundamentals of the world (rather than to understand it)

In the modern age, with all of the engineering professionals groups - accreditation as an engineer was backed up with duty of an engineer to be morally upright - to have an understanding of morality and ethics... Nothing to do with engineering, but neverless now something that has become expected of an engineer

Thoughts

In a sense, the thoughts and statements of engineering have to describe some sort of "formally trained, ethical person who uses maths and/or natural science to make stuff for someone"

The words engineer, engineered, and engineering should each be held to their own regard.

Someone who makes or invents something is an engineer, because they have engineered something.
But it does not necessarily give them the title "engineer".

And the argument is spurious - Replace the word "engineer" with almost anything, and you could probably deliberate some scenario that would work.

It's much easier to blanketly say that the title of an engineer is someone who has received accreditation from an accredited Engineering faculty. Though of course it will lead to a chain reaction of validating and verifying 'accredited' businesses