Conceptual clarifications needed

For the past ten years or so in France, the expressions "engineering ethics" or "engineering ethics" have appeared in specialist literature, conference titles and course titles. Outside the circles that produce them, these expressions arouse curiosity, astonishment and sometimes suspicion. The English equivalent, engineering ethics, poses no comparable problem in academic or engineering circles. It refers to a field of thought and practice that has developed since the early twentieth century through codes that are now familiar to all North American graduates, but also in certain European countries, notably the Netherlands and Spain, and in South America. In the USA, the words "ethics" and "engineering" (or "engineers") have been associated for 40 years in dictionary articles on philosophy and applied ethics, and on dozens of textbook covers for engineering students. The earliest such textbooks...