 These wicked problems are often broadly social problems, which would best be met by some form of ‘social action’, which would result in people changing their behavior or acting differently in such a way that the problem would be mitigated or even disappear completely. In defense of the engineering view, it could perhaps be said that the repertoire of ‘proven’ forms of social action is meager. The temptation of technical fixes could be overcome—at least that is how an engineer might see it—by the inclusion of the social sciences in the systematic development and application of knowledge to the solution of human problems. This however, is a controversial view. Social engineering is to many a specter to be kept at as large a distance as possible instead of an ideal to be pursued. Karl Popper referred to acceptable forms of implementing social change as ‘piecemeal social engineering’ and contrasted it to the revolutionary but completely unfounded schemes advocated by, e.g., Marxism. In the entry on  Karl Popper,  however, his choice of words is called ‘rather unfortunate’. The notion of social engineering, and its cogency, deserves more attention that it is currently receiving.