Scientific Knowledge and Technological Advance

1
Scientific Knowledge and Technological Advance

• Volti Chapter 4

2
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

3
The Historical Separation of Science and
Technology

• 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)

4
Modern Relationship between Technology and Science

• 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

5
How Technology Differs from Science

• 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
• 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
• Due to demand of product, technician cannot
  abandon projects as easily as scientist
• Under more time pressures

6
Science - Is it true? All possibilities must be
accounted for. Need for ANSWER Technology - Will
it work? Technology still relevant even if we
dont know how it works

• 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."

7
Indirect effects of Technology on Scientific
Advance

• 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."

8
The Commonalities of Science and Technology

• 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

9
The Translation of Science into Technology

• 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"