The challenge of transversal education through teaching ethics in engineering: From hubris to hybrid

Challenge has been the driving force to carry out the project of ethics introduction in the engineering studies at the School of Mining and Energy of the Technical University of Madrid. The challenge was faced with the support of arguments derived from the analytical review of the modern scientific policy trajectory through Europe and the United States, with Spain remaining in an ill-defined situation, along the decades of the 20th and 21st centuries. The emerging ideas from that process were that a blend of top-down and bottom-up approaches intervened in science policy design and promotion whereas a hubris culture evolved in the scientific and technological realm. The decision was to adopt a highly innovative trajectory with several landmarks to travel from the scientific and technological hubris to social hybridization. A first critical step was to tackle the process in a different way to that imposed by the Spanish context limitations by moving from top down approaches to bottom up ones. A second one was to introduce ethics in engineering higher education curricula within the perspective of an interethics concept based on responsibility supported consequentialism. The integrative teaching scheme has shown to be valid and valuable for students acquiring transversal skills.