Abstract
Understanding the relationships between science and technology has long been a central problem for those who have studied the generation of expertise. The fundamental questions focus on (1) What is the relationship between changes in the two, i.e., does technological change depend upon scientific change or vice versa, are the two best seen as independent ventures, or is a more complex relationship based upon mutual interactions involved? (2) How do the two areas compare in their modes of work, social organizations, motivations, and personnel? (3) What relationship does each bear to the reality of the natural, material world that exists independently of human society?
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Reference Notes
Industrialized societies of the twentieth century can make a sharp distinction between scientist and technologist on the basis of separate professional organizations. Distinctions between the two modes of activity were more difficult to make before the mid-nineteenth century, and contrasting interpretations of their relationships have been presented. R. A. Buchanan argues that science and technology before 1850 are both reflections of a single “Promethean Revolution” that began in Medieval Europe. The distinctions we see today have been the result of professionalization [“The Promethean Revolution: Science Technology and History” in History of Technology 1976, A. Rupert Hall and Norman Smith, eds. (London: Mansell, 1976), pp. 77–83]. Otto Mayr argues that a search for one relationship between science and technology is bound to fail because there have been many [The science-technology relationship as a historiographie problem, Technology and Culture 17 (1976): 663–673]. Edwin Layton has argued that science and technology were separate before the nineteenth century but came into closer relationships afterward; they still can be distinguished, however, by professional organization and the element of design in technology, among other factors [American ideologies of science and engineering, Technology and Culture 17 (1976): 688–701].
The nature of scientific knowledge and how it is created has been a lively field of study since the appearance of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. A convenient collection of some of the important papers surrounding Kuhn’s work is in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970), 282 pp.
Carl Mitcham, “Types of Technology,” in Research in Philosophy and Technology, Paul T. Durbin, ed., 1 (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1978): 229–294.
Carl Mitcham, “Types of Technology,” in Research in Philosophy and Technology, Paul T. Durbin, ed., 1 (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1978): p. 242.
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Betty Hardee and Kazuo Tomita, “A Survey of Scientific and Professional Characteristics of the General Membership of the Entomological Society of America,” Report No. 25, Johns Hopkins University, Center for Research in Scientific Communication, July, 1973, p. 9.
Betty Hardee and Kazuo Tomita, “A Survey of Scientific and Professional Characteristics of the General Membership of the Entomological Society of America,” Report No. 25, Johns Hopkins University, Center for Research in Scientific Communication, July, 1973, p. 6.
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L. D. Newsom, M. Kogan, F. D. Miner, R. L. Rabb, L. G. Turnipseed, and W. H. Whitcomb, “General accomplishments toward better pest control in soybean,” in New Technology of Pest Control, Carl B. Huffaker, ed. (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1980), pp. 74–75, Table 3.11.
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The continuum described here is adapted from a general scheme proposed by Edwin T. Layton, American ideologies of science and engineering, Technology and Culture 17 (1976): 688–701.
Charles E. Rosenberg has written extensively on the tension impinging upon applied sciences. See No Other Gods (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), 273 pp., for a convenient summary of his work. Chapter 9, “Science, technology, and economic growth,” is particularly important.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 210 pp. (hereafter cited as Kuhn, Structure).
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 366 pp. (hereafter cited as Kuhn, Tension).
Harold I. Brown, Perception, Theory, and Commitment (Chicago: Precedent Publishing, Inc. 1977), 203 pp. (hereafter cited as Brown, Perception).
Kuhn, Tension, p. 326.
Karl R. Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 480 pp., is frequently contrasted with Kuhn’s work. Popper acknowledged that historically science frequently developed with irrational elements, but he believed that an empiricist-derived logic enabled scientists to construct ever closer approximations of truth. A standard compendium of the issues involved is Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 282 pp. Recent articles exploring the epistemological issues include John Krige, Popper’s epistemology and the autonomy of science, Social Studies of Science 8 (1978): 287–307, and Michael Mulkay, Knowledge and utility: Implications for the sociology of knowledge, Social Studies of Science 9 (1979): 63–80. Current literature on the philosophy of science can be traced through the “Critical Bibliography,” an annual publication of the History of Science Society in Isis; e.g., for 1979 see Isis 70 (1979), “Critical Bibliography 1979,” pp. 21–25.
Brown, Perception, p. 81.
Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., pp. 111–116.
Ibid., pp. 95–101.
Kuhn, Tension, pp. 266–292.
îbid., pp. 320–339.
Brown, Perception, pp. 147–148.
Kuhn, Tension, pp. 237–239; Margaret Masterman, “The nature of a paradigm,” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 71.
Edward W. Constant, A model for technological change applied to the turbojet revolution, Technology and Culture 14 (1973): 553–572.
Derek L. Phillips, Wittgenstein and Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Perspective (London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1977), p. 47.
Brown, Perception, pp. 145–151; Kuhn, Tension, pp. 330–331.
Brown, Perception, pp. 154–155.
Ibid., p. 153.
Ibid., pp. 145–154.
Kuhn, Structure, p. 10.
Kuhn, Tension, pp. 293–319; Martin J. Klein, Aber Shimony, and Trevor J. Pinch, Paradigm lost? A review symposium, Isis 70 (1979): 429–440.
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Perkins, J.H. (1982). A Conceptual Framework. In: Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3998-4_6
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