Research in Science Education, 1992, 22, 140 - 148

THE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE TO TECHNOLOGY

Paul L. Gardner Monash University

ABSTRACT

The notion that technology is the application of science to the making of artefacts is a widely-held, persistent and influential view. Considerable scholarly work has been done during the past quarter century to refute it on the grounds that it is historically and ontologically inaccurate. It is a view which fails to recognise the contribution of non-scientific factors to technological development, which neglects the reverse contribution of technology to science, and which offers a superficial account of the process of application. This paper focusses on this last point, and argues that in those cases where science is applied to technology, the application process is usually exceedingly complex. The process involves the selection of appropriate knowledge, the adoption of differing criteria and the translation and re-shaping of knowledge to make it amenable to the technologist. The issue has important implications for the school curriculum.

THE TECHNOLOGY-AS-APPLIED-SCIENCE POSITION

...basic research leads to new knowledge... It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn. New products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science.

Vannevar Bush, US presidential advisor on science policy (Bush, 1945, pp 13-14).

The technologist must have a tremendous knowledge of science; and he must understand that science which he puts to such good use. Furthermore ... the technologist is sterile: one generation of technologists cannot breed the next generation -- for the latter will be far behind the frontiers, and will lack the deeper understanding which is part of their preparation. It is the pure scientists who must give the next generation of technologists essential training.

Professor Eric Rogers, director, Nuffield Physics Project (quoted in McCulloch, Jenkins & Layton, 1985, pp 96-97.)

Technology is the application of scientific knowledge to the solution of human problems.

junior secondary textbook for Craft, Design and Technology in England (Breckon & Prest, 1983, p 46)

[Technology is] the enabling process by which science is applied to satisfy our needs.

British curriculum guide for science teachers (Holman, 1986, p 23)

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...technology is an application of the concepts and principles of science. Ministry of Education (British Columbia) (1986, p 4)

Technology has been described in many ways. But most definitions concur that technology is the application of math and science for specific purposes...to make our lives better, more productive or more enjoyable.

W. B. Waetjen, chairman, US Technology Education Advisory Council (TEAC, 1988)

Undei'lying all of these quotations is a common ontological position: that technological outcomes are the result of applying scientific knowledge. This technology-as-applied-science (TAS) view is widely-held, persistent, influential, and it has distinguished intellectual ancestry. The 17th century scholar, Francis Bacon, in his Novum Organum, was a powerful advocate for the idea that technology ought to be applied science. "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed", he wrote; science was to provide the knowledge of nature that technology would then use for human betterment. It was an argument which would be used to underpin the establishment of organisations such as the Royal Institution and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which sought to apply scientific knowledge to the world of practical affairs. Not surprisingly, it is a position which finds much favour among the science research funding lobby. It finds its way into school science textbooks in which technological artefacts are offered as illustrations of scientific principles, the unstated implication often being that the artefact was developed through the application of those principles (Gardner, ~1990).

CRITICAL ATTACKS ON THE TAS POSITION

Despite the confident assertions about the equivalence of technology and applied science, the TAS view is a philosophical position, and not an established fact. It is a view which has been subjected to considerable scholarly attack during the past 30 years (but remains firmly entrenched, nevertheless). The grounds of the attack are that the TAS position is untenable on both historical and ontological grounds.

Space does not allow for the details of this attack to be elaborated here; a mention of some of the key scholars, institutions and journals will have to suffice. Alexandre Koyr6 (1948) was an early critic of the traditional view; his essay, published in France, argued that technology was an independent system of thought which differed from science. A decade would elapse before similar challenges would emerge on the other side of the Atlantic, with the formation of the Society for the History of Technology in 1958, and the inception of its journal, Technology and Culture, the first to specialise in the history and philosophy of technology. Many papers in its second, 1%1, volume challenged the conventional wisdom of the TAS view. In 1962, it published the proceedings of a conference sponsored by The Encyclopaedia Brittanica; science/technology relationships were among the topics discussed. Three years later, the journal devoted a whole issue to this topic; the papers included a seminal article by Derek de Solla Price (1965) ("Is technology historically independent of science? A study in statistical historiography")which argued that the two fields had developed largely independently, with only occasional contributions from science to technology, usually with a long time gap, i.e. the science was "old science".

In 1%5, the Society organised a symposium on "Toward a Philosophy of Technology"; papers and comments were published in Technology and Culture the following year. One

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contributor (Skolimowsky, 1966) attacked the TAS position unequivocally. He noted that it was the business of epistemology "to investigate the peculiarities of technology and its relation to other forms of human knowledge", especially its relation to science, and went on to argue "(1) [that] it is erroneous to consider technology as being an applied science, (2) that technology is not science, (3) that the difference between science and technology can best be grasped by examining the idea of scientific progress and the idea of technological progress" (p 372).

A generation has passed since the beginnings of this rethinking of the science/technology relationship, and much has been written in the intervening period. Nevertheless, the TAS view continues to dominate many people's thoughts about technology. The opening words of a recent book (Vincenti, 1990) on the nature of engineering knowledge clearly recognise the persistence of the TAS view:

Engineering knowledge, though pursued at great effort and expense in schools of engineering, receives little attention from scholars in other disciplines. Most such people, when they pay heed to engineering at all, tend to think of it as applied science. Modern engineers are seen as taking their knowledge from scientists and, by some occasionally dramatic but probably intellectually uninteresting process, using this knowledge to fashion material artefacts. From this point of view, studying the epistemology of science should automatically subsume the knowledge content of engineering. Engineers know from experience that this view is untrue, and in recent decades historians of technology have produced narrative and analytical evidence in the same direction. Since engineers tend not to be introspective, however, and philosophers and historians (with certain exceptions) have been limited in their technical expertise, the character of engineering knowledge as an epistemological species is only now being examined in detail (p 3).

Vincenti went on to argue that technology is a form of thought which "though different in its specifics, resembles scientific thought in being creative and constructive; it is not simply routine and deductive as assumed in the applied-science model. In this newer view, technology, though it may apply science, is not the same as or entirely applied science" (p 4). The view that the knowledge content of technology comes from science

immediately defines the science-technology relation -- technology is hierarchically subordinate to science, serving only to deduce the implications of scientific discoveries and give them practical application. This relation is summarized in the discredited statement that "technology is applied science." Such a hierarchical model leaves nothing basic to be discussed about the nature of the relationship. A model with such rigidity is bound to have difficulty fitting the complex historical record (p 5).

Criticisms and consequences of the TAS view There are two major lines of argument against the TAS view. The first is historical: its central thrust is that technology has developed throughout the ages largely without the benefit of scientific knowledge. Historians critical of the TAS view point to the enormous numbers of artefacts (windmills, water wheels, bridges, sailing ships, barbed wire, pencils....) developed without scientific input. Often, when there has been a link between technological capability and scientific knowledge (lens manufacture and laws of refraction,

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steel making and chemical theory), the technology has preceded the science. The second is ontological; its central thesis is that technological capability is a necessary_ precursor to scientific conceptualisation, that thought is a consequence of praxis. On this argument, medieval developments in clock-making laid the foundation for our modern concept of time; moreover, experience with clockwork mechanisms provided a fruitful metaphor for the later Newtonian model of the universe. The recent writings of Ihde (1983, 1991) are prominent in this field.

Associated with the TAS view are a number of intellectual positions, many of which are open to critical challenge. Through its emphasis on formalised scientific thought, the TAS view fails to give adequate recognition to the role of other, non-scientific factors, such as the crucial role of design in technological innovation, the importance of trial-and-error, and the influence of societal (cultural, pofitical, economic) forces in shaping a line of technological development. It leads to an "idealist" reading of the history of science and technology, in which prominence is given to ideas (the revival of the "Greek scientific spirit" in the Renaissance) and the vital contributions of medieval technology are ignored. It tends to neglect the crucial role of instrumentation in science, not merely as a tool, but as a shaper of thought; it fails to give credit to the part that technology has played in generating new questions for scientific research.

Even in cases where a technological innovation does make use of prior scientific knowledge, the issue of application is often treated superficially, as if this were an obvious rather than a complex process. This issue is the focus of the present paper.

AN ANALYSIS OF 'APPLICATION'

Application as algorithm One immediate problem in this discussion is that 'application', like many other abstractions in the English language, has a wide range of connotations. In scientific and mathematical contexts, it is often used to refer to the process of using an algorithm ( [a + b] 2 = a 2 + 2ab + b 2) or a scientific law statement (Ohm's law) to deduce a correct answer to a well-defined question. Thomas Edison's request to his applied physicist, F. Upton, to calculate the amount of copper needed to implement his electric street-fighting proposal (Agassi, 1%6) exemplifies this meaning of 'application'. If one knows the relevant formula or law, it is a straightforward matter to use it to obtain a correct answer. Some writers seem to believe that this simple connotation of 'application' successfully accounts for all cases of science-based technology. Thus, a century ago, Henry Rowland (1848-1901), who trained as an engineer and later became a professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University, could write that:

It is not an uncommon thing especially in American newspapers, to have the applications of science confounded with pure science; and some obscure American who steals the ideas of some great mind of the past, and enriches himself by the application of the same to domestic uses, is often lauded above the originator of the ideas, who might have worked out hundreds of such applications, had his mind possessed the necessary element of vulgarity (quoted by Finch, 1%1, p 326).

The implicit belief underlying this extraordinary statement is that it is simple to turn a scientific idea into a technological application.

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At~olication as selection Actually, the connections between the ideas that form part of a body of scientific knowledge and their embodiment in a practical outcome are seldom self-evident. The technologist wishing to apply scientific knowledge to the solution of a technological problem must often first decide which knowledge is appropriate. Bunge (1966, p 333) notes that artefact construction frequently does not require the application of all the scientific knowledge available in the field at any given time. Most modern optical instruments, for example, can be adequately designed with a knowledge of 16th century ray optics; wave theory cart be drawn upon to explain, in outline but not in detail, other effects -- mostly undesirable -- such as chromatic aberration. Wave equation descriptions of events such as the movement of a camera shutter are of purely academic interest, of no concern to the camera designer. Thus judgements have to be made about what knowledge to select.

Application involves adopting differing criteria The difficulty in applying scientific knowledge to practical outcomes is exacerbated by the very form of that knowledge. Science is concerned with precisely defined variables, with knowledge of relationships obtained under controlled conditions. In real situations, however,

the relevant variables are seldom adequately known and precisely controlled. Real situations are much too complex for this, and effective action is much too strongly urged to permit a detailed study -- a study that would begin by isolating variables and tying some of them into a theoretical model (Bunge, 1966, p 335).

Scientific demands for precision are sometimes unnecessary in technology. Artefacts can often be successfully designed and made without (or even despite) scientific precision, because the "accuracy requirements in applied science and practice are far below those prevailing in pure research so that a rough and simple theory supplying quick correct estimates of orders of magnitude very often will suffice in practice" (p 334).

Application requires the translation and reshaoing of knowledge Before a technologist can make use of a scientific idea, that idea must often be translated into a more useable form. This can be an exceedingly complex process, and may include any of the following:

translation from one language to another; translation from "physicists' language" to "engineers' language"; translation from the inventor's idea through to design, prototype and final manufactured product; frequently, additional technical problems have to be surmounted along the way.

Scientists and technologists may use different forms of language in describing their work; successful application may first require someone to act as an interpreter. (Sometimes, this is literally true: some of the early mathematical treatises on the ideal shape of gear wheels were written in Latin, totally unintelligible to the average millwright!) Feibleman (1961) notes that modern theories, especially in physics, are

of such a degree of mathematical abstraction that an intermediate type of interest and activity is now required. The theories which are discovered in the physicists'

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laboratories and published as journal articles take some time to make their way into engineering handbooks and contract practices. Some intermediate theory is necessary for getting from theory to practice (p 309).

Even when scientists deliberately set out to help technologists solve practical problems, the form of communication may inhibit effective application. James Clerk Maxwell, for example, did pioneei'ing work on electromagnetic theory; he also did some important work on the analysis of stresses in frameworks and attempted to solve practical problems. However, his publications in both fields first had to be "translated" before they could be used by engineers. Translation often involves "extensive reformulation and an act of creative insight" (E. Layton, 1971, pp 577-578).

The development of the direct-current dynamo during the 19th century provides another illustration. Henry Rowland, mentioned earlier, pursued "pure" research and published some important work on magnetic permeability and the mathematics of electromagnetic circuits. He failed to make practical use of his findings, although they were relevant to improving the design of the d.c. dynamo; he seemed to be more interested in discovering laws of nature than industrial design principles. Meanwhile, a practising engineer in England, John Hopkinson, working in co-operation with Thomas Edison, had devised a graphical method of describing dynamo behaviour which allowed major improvements to be made, by changing the dimensions of some of its parts (Mayr, 1971; E. Layton, 1971). (There is some delightful irony here in the light of Rowland's disparaging remarks about the vulgarity of inventors who "stole" the ideas of pure scientists!)

The re-shaping of scientific knowledge for technological purposes often requires additional skills (e.g. engineering skills) which are not deducible from the scientific knowledge being applied, a point already rccognised in 1922 by J. D. North, a British aeronautical engineer, in a paper given to the Royal Aeronautical Socicty:

Aeroplanes are not designed by science, but by art in spite of some pretence and humbug to the contrary. I do not mean to suggest for one moment that engineering can do without science, on the contrary it stands on scientific foundations, but there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer (cited by Vincenti, 1990, p 4).

Vincenti goes on to comment that it is the creative and constructive knowledge of the engineer which is needed to implement that art; technological knowledge "in this view appears enormously richer and more interesting than it does as applied science" (p 4).

Translation of knowledge into artefact may be difficult because the scientific knowledge was gained under idealised or laboratory-scale conditions; applyingit to real-life, full-scale conditions may first require the surmounting of additional problems. A.R. Hall (1961) notes that the 17th century Danish astronomer Ole Roemer and members of the French Academy of Sciences had worked out that gear teeth would mesh more accurately if they had epicycloidal profiles, but this was of no practical value to millwrights (even had they known of the research), since they lacked the machinery for cutting suitable material. Wood could have been cut to shape, but was unsuitable for gear teeth, while iron was impossibly difficult to work except on a small scale.

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The history of the extraction of aluminium provides a second illustration of this point. Hans Christian Oersted first obtained traces of impure aluminium in 1825 by mixing potassium-mercury amalgam with anhydrous aluminium chloride; two years later, Friedrich Wohler tried a similar reaction, using potassium in place of the amalgam. By 1854, H. St. Claire Deville had made some aluminium leaf electrolytically. However, practical exploitation of this knowledge by Charles H. Hall in the United States and (independently) P.L.C. H6roult in Switzerland took another thirty years, and large-scale commercial exploitation another twenty years. Viability depended upon the development of other technologies, namely the Bayer process for concentrating the aluminium oxide used as the raw material, and the electric furnace and the dynamo for producing high temperatures and currents. The first commercial production, through the electrolysis of aluminium oxide dissolved in molten sodium-aluminium fluoride, was carried out in Pittsburgh in 1888, but the yield was small, limited to about 20 kg per day. Mass production was not possible until cheap hydroelectric power became available in the early 1900s (Rae, 1960; Bronowski, Barry, Fisher & Huxley, 1%3, p 118; M.B. Hall, 1976).

The basic technology of the jet engine was known to Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century, when he used a jet of steam in his toy "aelopile". Rockets have been in use for military and other purposes since the 13th century. The basic physics -- Newton's action- reaction law -- was elucidated in the 17th century, and the specific idea of a gas-driven turbine was put forward late in the 18th century. However, when, in 1929, a 22-year old RAF cadet named Frank Whittle conceived of applying the gas turbine to jet propulsion,

he still had a dozen years of frustrating effort ahead of him before he had an engine operating in actual flight. His difficulties were not matters of fundamental principle, but tcchnical points like the proper setting of turbine blades or the control of air turbulence in the compressor (Rae, 1%1, p 397).

Finally, the process of moving from invention through to prototype and commercial product is often very complex, requiring skills not necessarily possessed by the scientist or inventor. Rabi (1%5) was a distinguished US physicist involved in developing microwave radar during the second world war, and was close to people engaged in other major projects (the atomic bomb, the transistor, the maser and the klystron tube). He argues that the process of translating a scientific idea into a technological product involves many diverse steps, each usually requiring people with highly specialised abilities. The ability to conceive of an invention, he argues, is very different to the ability to see through the numerous details of the process of making it. Before the magnetron tube could be manufactured, several men spent months finding out "how to describe it, to reduce it to drawings, so that it could be properly made by the manufacturers" (p 12). A prototype could then be constructed in the model shop; the next task "was to break down the stages of production into simple procedures so that the magnetron could be made economically and in such a way that each one would work the way it was supposed to" (p 13). Rabi likens the harmonious co-ordination of this process to the conducting of a symphony orchestra.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOL CURRICULA

An obvious implication of all this is for curriculum content itself, for the story we tell students about the nature of science and technology. Although the simplistic TAS view has been thoroughly discredited for over quarter of a century, the arguments have tended to

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remain in academic journals and scholarly books; they have not generally found their way into science teacher education programs, school texts and classroom practice. There are three important consequences of this. One is that as long as technology is perceived as an offshoot of science, instead of as a complex field worthy of study in its own fight and on its own terms, science will continue to be regarded as the more powerful and hence more socially valued area of study. A second is that students not intending to proceed with fur- ther studies in tectniological fields may leave school with a distorted view of the nature of technology. The third is that students wishing to proceed in this area may be guided into it, and selected for it, on the basis of abilities and interests in scientific and mathematical fields which are only partly relevant to the education of technologists. A decade ago, George (1981, pp 25-26), an engineer, criticised high school curricula in which students are taught "physics, chemistry and biology as abstract, self-significant science which understandably come to represent the whole of science in their minds... Engineering and the work of engineers remains obscure. At best, engineers are thought to apply science (physics, chemistry, biology) and mathematics to some practical ends". Students typically ended their secondary education "with a distorted view of science and virtually no concept of engineering and technology" (p 26). George was writing about education in Canada a decade ago, but his criticisms apply equally well to Australia today.

Acknowledgement

Much of the reference material for this paper was gathered during a period of study leave as a visiting professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science Education at the University of British Columbia in 1991. The author is grateful to UBC for providing various resources which facilitated the writing of this paper.

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AUTHOR

DR. PAUL GARDNER, Reader in Education, Monash University, Clayton 3168. Specializations: science/technology education, technology teacher education, educational evaluation.