The ideas and examples referenced below are notes compiled by Robert Keel from his reading of Volti, Rudi. 2014. Society and Technological Change. 7th edition. New York, NY: Worth Publishers. They are intended for classroom use.

SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE

• Technology more than "applied science."
• Technology often emerged without scientific knowledge.
• Scientific advance sometimes depends on prior Technological advances.

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 (craft basis).

"Through the bulk of human history, Technology has flourished in societies where science has remained undeveloped, and vice versa." (Thomas Kuhn, in Volti page 62)

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.

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.
  1. Works with more freedom; can abandon one theory when another appears more promising.
  2. The notion that scientific progress leads to material progress has conferred more respectability on scientists than on technicians.
• Technicians— work is more structured
  1. Due to demand of product, technician cannot abandon projects as easily as scientist.
  2. 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

• Iron produced for decades before it was known what actually occurred inside a 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." (page 69)

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." (Langdon Winner, in Volti page 62)

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.

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." (page 76)

Questions (page 76):

1. Congress canceled funding for the superconducting supercollider (used for high-energy physics research) in 1993 ($8.5 billion) However, congress continued to fund the international space station, and its costs are at around $100 billion. Why support one and not the other? Is it a matter of scientific value or something is else at work?
2. Why have science and technology been so closely associated in popular thought? How does each of them gain from this association?
3. Monetary considerations aside, which would you find more personally satisfying: making a scientific discovery or inventing a useful technology? Why?
4. Many research projects in the natural sciences receive grants for millions of dollars, whereas most research projects in the social sciences and humanities receive a few thousand dollars in grants. Why is this so? Is it a proper distribution of research funds?
5. Students in engineering programs take a substantial number of courses in the natural sciences and mathematics. Should some of these be replaced with more courses in the social sciences and humanities? Why or why not?

Chapter 5

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/280/soctechchange/soctech4.htm
Owner: Robert O. Keel: rok@umsl.edu
Last Updated: Monday, January 18, 2016 14:11