Scientific Knowledge and
Technological Advance
Volti Chapter 4
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE
Technology more than "applied science"
 Technology often emerged w/out scientific
knowledge
 Scientific advance sometimes depends on
prior Technological advances
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The Historical Separation of
Science and Technology
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Most Technologies have been developed with little
scientific input
Greece - many Technological achievements made
without science, yet Scientific legacy more significant
than Technological legacy
Rome - similar lack of connectivity, however Rome's
greatest advances were in the area of technology with
little scientific development.
"The bulk if human history, Technology has flourished in
societies where science has remained undeveloped, and
vice versa." (Thomas Kuhn)
Modern Relationship between
Technology and Science
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U.S. (1960's) - Project Hindsight - Study of effect
of pure science on development of major
weapon systems
Results of study revealed that pure science had
very little impact on Technological development
Limitations of study - only considered scientific
knowledge after 1945, not before that time,
which was arguably, critical to success of
Technology
How Technology Differs from Science
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The two are very different in their basic nature
Science - knowledge for its own sake
Technology - a means to an end
Obviously, motives come into play, and make it difficult to cleanly
categorize the two
Scientists - motives seen as pure, "for science sake," not influenced
by politics, economy, society
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Works with more freedom; can abandon one theory when another
appears more promising
The notion that scientific progress leads to material progress has
conferred more respectability on scientists than on technicians
Technicians - work is more structured
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Due to demand of product, technician cannot abandon projects as
easily as scientist
Under more time pressures
Science - Is it true?: All possibilities must be accounted for.
Need for ANSWER
Technology - Will it work? Technology still relevant even if
we don’t know how it works
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Iron produced for decades before it was known what actually
occurred inside furnace
Scientific knowledge may be a by-product of Technological
achievements
Development of steam injector led to abandonment of a scientific
theory of nature of heat
Technological developments often reach a plateau due to a lack of
scientific knowledge
"When Science and Technology have gone their separate ways, as
has been the case for most of human history, they develop more
slowly that when they interact with each other, as they have done to
an increasing degree during the twentieth century."
Indirect effects of Technology on
Scientific Advance
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Technology supplies devices and instruments for scientific inquiry:
Telescopes and galvanometers
Much Scientific research has been funded in the hopes that it will "pay off"
one day
This pay off can only take place with the help of technology
"[The ultimate success of science] must be accounted to its fulfillment of
Baconian ambitions--the delivery of power. Other modes of knowing have
been able to give an intelligible, systematic, aesthetically pleasing picture of
reality. If science had only been able to accomplish this and nothing more, it
is likely that it would have been supplanted by yet another philosophy of
inquiry. But in the West at least, the test is not so much what do you know?
Or how elegant is your interpretation of worldly phenomena? But rather,
What can actually do? This is the conclusive factor, the reason that, for
instance, social science has never fully established its credentials in the
halls of science. Science succeeds over rival ways of knowing--poetry,
religion, art, philosophy, and the occult— not by its ability to illuminate, not
even by its ability to organize knowledge, but by its ability to produce solid
results...In the last analysis The popular proof of science is technology."
The Commonalities of Science
and Technology
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Both based on the gathering of knowledge
Both advance through cumulative development
Both share rational thought processes - though
neither are totally rational in their scope: Values,
interpretation, and serendipity central to both
endeavors
Mathematics central to both
Both share sense of optimism and progress
The Translation of Science
into Technology
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A great deal of scientific information is translated
into technology through the education of
engineers
Science can stifle Technology because of its
rigidity and movement toward a single answer
(rather than several possibilities)
"Both science and technology seem to do best
when they remain in close contact, but this
should not obscure the fact that they remain very
different enterprises"