Engineering is generally considered a profession, but science, or at least some of the sciences, are sometimes counted as professions and sometimes distinguished from them. Often, a dispute about the professional status of a science begins when someone proposes it have a code of ethics. What is a profession? What has professional status to do with ethics? What distinction, if any, exists between the professional status of engineering and science? Why should the professional status of either matter?

Four Senses of "Profession"

In ordinary usage, profession has at least four senses. First, profession can be a mere synonym for vocation (or calling), that is, any useful activity to which one devotes (and perhaps feels called to devote) much of one's life. (If the activity were not useful, it would be a hobby rather than a vocation.) Profession in this sense has no necessary relation...