The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
April 2003
Edwin T. Layton, Jr.
American Ideologies of Science and Engineering
Technology & Culture
Vol. 17, No. 4
October 1976
688-701
If we examine the
ideologies of science and engineering that developed in the 19th and 20th
centuries in America, we find not one but three different views of science and
technology and, hence, of their interaction. The ideologies are associated, respectively,
with basic science, engineering science, and design. Taken together the three ideologies suggest a
relationship between science and engineering that has been remarkably like the
relationship called “symbiosis” in organic nature. [1] In symbiosis two different organisms live
together in a mutually beneficial relationship. Science and engineering are different social
organisms; each constitutes a distinctive subculture with its own membership
and values, its own rituals and beliefs. But both engineering and science inhabit the
world of matter and energy. Being
different organisms, they use this world in different ways. Less obviously, they also perceive it
differently. Each claims a body of
knowledge properly called “science.” But
in this case the same word designates two (or perhaps three) distinct bodies of
knowledge. While distinct, they are not
totally different; there are curious symmetries which link the two to a common
physical reality and to each other. Finally,
the relationship has been highly beneficial to both parties. The remarkable dynamism of Western science and
technology owes much to the mutual stimulation that each has provided the
other.
While each ideology
incorporates important truths, if taken separately any of the ideologies will
obscure the relationship between science and technology. The scientific ideology is the most familiar
and most influential. It has been
accepted as fact and incorporated into both the conventional wisdom and the
scholarship of our age. Vannevar Bush
was the most important spokesman for this view; by his agency it came to
constitute the foundation for important public policies dealing with science. His views were expressed in his
DR. LAYTON, of the University of Minnesota, was
awarded the Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology for his
book The Revolt of the Engineers.
1. The use of “symbiosis” to explain science-technology relations is
also found in M. Gibbons and C. Johnson, “Relationship between Science and
Technology,” Nature 227 (July 11, 1970): 125-27.
688
influential report as director of the U.S. Office of
Scientific Research and Development. It
is worth quoting at some length:
Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. 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.
Today, it is truer than ever that basic research is
the pacemaker of technological progress. In the nineteenth century, Yankee mechanical
ingenuity building largely upon the basic discoveries of European scientists,
could greatly advance the technical arts. Now the situation is different.
A nation which depends upon others for its new basic scientific
knowledge will be slow in its industrial progress and weak in its competitive
position in world trade, regardless of its mechanical skill.[2]
In short, the scientific
ideology interprets a symbiotic relationship as a case of intellectual
parasitism.
It is important to realize
that the term “science” has at least two distinct meanings, and that scientists
and engineers often use it quite differently. In its older usage in English, “science” often
meant anything that had to be learned, such as sewing or horseback riding. But by the 17th and 18th centuries, it had
come to be associated with systematic knowledge, including that associated with
a craft. In other words, “science”
included technology. This broad usage of
“science” is continued in German with the term “wissenschaft” which may
apply to any systematic knowledge, such as linguistics or history. In the course of the 19th century, “science”
took on its modern, narrow meaning, as the body of knowledge generated by
scientists. The last term, “scientist,”
was coined by Whewell when the older term “natural philosopher” became obsolete
in an age of increasing professionalization. Now engineers often use the term “science” in
its older meaning as including technology, whereas scientists tend to use it in
its more restricted, modern sense.
Purely semantic differences
are real, and they have often led to confusion. But ideological forces are at work also. [3] The scientific ideology expressed by Bush may
be traced back at least as far as
2. Vannevar Bush, Science, The Endless Frontier: A Report to the
President (Washington, D.C., 1945), pp. 13-14.
3. For a discussion of the nature of professional ideologies, see Howard
S. Becker and James W. Carper, “The Development of Identification with an
Occupation,” American Journal of Sociology 61 (January 1956): 289-98.
689
Joseph Henry, one of the “founding fathers” of science
as a profession in America. [4] Henry’s
arguments read superficially like the statements of modern ideologists such as
Vannevar Bush. Henry insisted that
“every mechanic art is based upon some principle of one general law of nature.”
[5]
Like Bush, Henry wished to establish the
legitimacy and importance of basic science. And there can be no doubt that Henry wanted to
show that technological progress is derived from and totally dependent on
science. But Henry’s position differed
in subtle ways from the modern one. His
basic distinction was between “art” and “science.” His term “science” should be understood in its
older, broader meaning. In particular,
his usage makes it clear that he included in that term the theoretical or
rational parts of technology and engineering.
[6]
But Henry’s paper was also
ideological. This is particularly true
of Henry’s insistence that all progress in art (or practice) depends on prior
advances in theory. It is, perhaps,
needless today to point out that this notion will not stand historical
scrutiny. Henry lived and worked in an
age when technological progress was highly regarded, but pure science was not. The young professor at Albany Academy
struggled to find time, support, and social approval for natural philosophy. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Henry
defending the legitimacy and importance of basic science. Henry’s magnification of the importance of
pure science is precisely the sort of thing that we find in all professional
ideologies. Indeed, the stress on basic
science continues to this day to be the central theme of scientific ideology. It is clearly the source of our current theory
of the relations of science and technology.
What is surprising,
however, is to find American engineers endorsing what appears to be the
scientific ideology. Thus, Thomas C.
Clarke in his presidential address before the American Society of Civil
Engineers in 1896 presented a version of science-technology relations that
Vannevar Bush might have endorsed. Clarke held that “science is the discovery and
classification of the laws of nature. Engineering…
is the practical application of such discovered laws.” [7] Rather confus
4. Henry’s most definitive statement was the one included in his
collected papers, entitled “The Improvement of the Mechanical Arts” (see Joseph
Henry, Scientific Writings of Joseph Henry, 2 vols. [Washington, D.C.,
1886], 1: 306-24). Nathan Reingold has
recently shown that this represents one of a series of statements by Henry (see
Nathan Reingold et al. eds., The Papers of Joseph Henry, December 1797-October
1832, The Albany Years [Washington, D.C., 1972], 1:163-79, 380-97).
5. Reingold et al., p. 383.
6. Ibid., pp. 384-85; Henry, 1:315.
7. Thomas C. Clarke, “Science and Engineering,” Transactions of the
American Society of Civil Engineers 35 (July 1896): 508.
690
ingly, Clarke also claimed that “engineering is the
great creative science.” [8] Clarke’s
address is not untypical. American engineers of the latter 19th and 20th
centuries often portrayed their role as that of applied scientists, though
sometimes with some seemingly contradictory qualifications. This is not what one might expect of a professional
ideology for engineers. One would expect
engineers to magnify the importance of their profession at the expense of
related disciplines.
The statements of engineers
which seem to endorse the scientists’ view of science-technology relationships
make more sense when it is realized that engineers often given the term
“science” a different meaning than do scientists. This is also true of terms like “theory” and
“laws of nature.” Nor do engineers
accept the priority of theory over practice that such statements would seem to
imply.
American engineers in the
19th century developed their own theory of the relations between science and
technology. Among the most important
were Benjamin F. Isherwood and Robert Thurston. [9] Both were pioneers in the development of a
distinctive science for engineering. Both found it necessary to reject the idea
that engineering science could be reduced to the application of the laws of
basic science to engineering. But they
did not reject science. They saw
themselves, quite properly, as scientists, and they were aware of the many
benefits which technology might derive from a close association with science. Their procedure, therefore, was to redefine
“science” in a way that brought it into closer correspondence with engineering
science.
Benjamin F. Isherwood,
chief engineer of the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, was led to examine the
relations of science and technology by the cutoff controversy. Would-be inventors made extravagant claims for
devices incorporating an early cutoff in the expansive use of steam. These claims rested on deductive arguments
based upon the law of Mariotte and Boyle, and for this reason the dispute led
to the philosophical issues of the nature of science and its relationship to
engineering.
Isherwood’s objection to
the application of scientific laws to engineering was that they represented an
abstraction and idealization
8. Ibid., p. 518.
9. Their role has been recently studied by David F. Channell, a graduate
student in the program in the History of Science and Technology at Case Western
Reserve University; see David F. Channell, “The Cut-Off Controversy”
(unpublished seminar paper, December 12, 1971), and “Engineering Science and
the Interaction of Science and Technology” (unpublished seminar paper, December
15, 1972).
10. Channell “Cut-Off Controversy,” pp. 3-4; see also Edward William
Sloan III, Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer (Annapolis, Md.,
1965), pp. 82-90.
691
which could not possibly describe the actual world of
steam engines. “The whole theory,” he
maintained, “is based upon a pure and simple abstraction, that of the idea of
perfect elasticity in gases and vapors unaffected by any of the conditions of
matter or of the steam engine.” [11] He insisted on
“the fallacy and fault of ignoring the physical conditions of a practical
problem.” [12] He denounced
the use of “imaginary assumptions that can only end in a vain parade of misdirected
skills.” [13]
Drawing upon Scottish
commonsense philosophy and Baconian empiricism, Isherwood proceeded to develop
his own idea of the nature of science. He
held that there were two ways to construct a theory, through either deduction
or induction. The theory of expansion
based upon Mariotte’s law failed, he thought, because it employed the wrong
approach to science: it was deductive, and started with an a priori
idealization and abstraction of the idea of perfect elasticity. To Isherwood, “the true method of constructing
a sound theory on any subject in physical science, is to commence by ascertaining
the value of every quantity by direct measurement.” [14] He insisted that “we must not seek for
physical truths in metaphysical abstractions, but in the connection subsisting
among natural phenomena.” [15]
Isherwood proceeded to a
positivistic critique of the nature of natural laws. Following Hume, Isherwood held that while the
language of causation was sometimes convenient, in fact “an inquiry into causes
is altogether vain and futile.” He
concluded that “science has no concern but with the discovery of laws,” and
these laws were “merely generalized facts.” Laws were to be discovered by inductive
measurement, the reduction of data to tables, and “from these tables we can
form general laws by gradually rising from particulars to generals.” [16]
Isherwood’s philosophy had
the effect of making science correspond more closely to engineering science. He acknowledged that his own work was simply
“a collection of original engineering statistics with the general laws deduced
from them.” But he insisted that “science
is nothing but a similar collection of statistics.” [17] Isherwood similarly imputed to science a
strongly utilitarian cast. To him sound
11. Benjamin F. Isherwood, Experimental Researches in Steam
Engineering, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1863), 1:140.
12. Ibid., p. xxv.
13. Ibid., p. xiv.
14. lbid., pp. 139-40.
15. Ibid., p. 139.
16. lbid., pp. 139-40.
17. Ibid p. xiv.
692
theory consisted of “the whole of the knowledge
we possess on any subject, put in such order and form that we can make a
reliable practical application of it.” [18] While
Isherwood was proposing to limit drastically the idea of science and general
law in one direction, he was expanding it in another. The general laws which he had deduced from his
statistical tables were not statements about nature at all but rather rules for
the design of a man-made object. In
short, Isherwood incorporated engineering principles into the laws of science.
While Isherwood thought
engineering science was an integral part of science, he thought of it as a
distinct and autonomous discipline. He
used a sort of “uncertainty principle” to distinguish between “pure science”
and engineering. In “pure science,”
Isherwood noted, a single “positive instance” might suffice. But engineering deals with complicated
situations in which the effects “are the joint production of many natural
causes and are influenced by a variety of circumstances,” so that engineers
must generalize “not from single facts but from ‘groups of facts.’” In addition, engineering must be concerned
with scale effects and the conditions of practice. “A fact, to be of practical authority in
engineering,” Isherwood held, “must be derived from experiments made on the
scale and under the conditions of actual practice.” [19] Implicit in Isherwood’s arguments was the
assumption that engineers dealt with machines, which set bounds on their work. Their investigations must, of necessity, be
less abstract and idealized. Engineers
cannot eliminate the complex interactions of physical factors which take place
in machines. Scale effects and other
circumstances cannot be neglected by engineers studying such devices. Thus, engineering science must differ somewhat
from physics.
Isherwood was a pioneer in
developing the scientific approach to engineering. But in the following generation it became more
widespread. Perhaps no one person better
personified this change than Robert Thurston. Among his most lasting achievements was the
creation of scientific institutions for technology analogous to those of
science. He was a pioneer advocate of
the establishment of engineering-research laboratories in connection with
schools of engineering. He made
important contributions to one of the emerging engineering sciences, the
strength of materials. He was very
active in the early development of both the American Institute of Civil Engineers,
and he was one of the four founders of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers in 1880. Thurston did not
despise theoretical studies; he translated Carnot’s classic treatise in
thermodynamics
18. Ibid., p. 139.
19. Ibid. p. xiv.
693
into English. [20] But he
remained skeptical concerning the application of theory to practice. His own A Manual of the Steam Engine, published
in 1891, was notably more practical and less theoretical than W. J. M.
Rankine’s earlier A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers. In his introduction, Thurston commented:
“The treatise of Professor Rankine, now ranked among the noblest of the
engineer’s classics, was published in 1859. The author [Thurston] then just out of college…
probably like many other young engineers, read the work with avidity,
anticipating that it might give him an applied theory of the heat engines, and
guide in their design and proportioning. But the results of thermodynamic computation
were in such evident disaccord with the practice of the time that he threw it
aside as disappointing and misleading.” [21] Thurston’s
objection was to excessive abstraction; Rankine had studied the ideal engine,
but he was concerned with the theory of the “real engine.” [22]
Thurston’s ideas were
influential, not merely because of his many technical treatises, but also
because he was a pioneer in developing a distinct ideology for American engineers
in the 1880s. He bears much
responsibility for the fact that American engineers adopted a self-image as
applied scientists. Thurston was aware
of Isherwood’s work, but the precise degree of influence is difficult to
determine. But Thurston and Isherwood
agreed in certain fundamentals. Both saw
technology as an integral but distinct part of science. Both thought of science in Baconian terms as
empirical and utilitarian. [23]
Rather positivistic,
Baconian definitions of both “science” and “theory” continued to be frequent in
discussions by American engineers well into the 20th century. Frederick W. Taylor, the founder of scientific
management, privately endorsed a sweeping denunciation by one of his followers,
Scudder Klyce, of all theoretical physics from Newton to thermodynamics. [24] Clearly, mathematical theory was not at the
core of what he considered science. He
was honestly puzzled when some critics questioned the scientific nature of his
system of management. His work was
highly empirical and involved arbitrary assumptions - for example, the time
needed for “necessary rest.” But he
asserted that this was also true for “all other sciences.” [25]
20. William F. Durand, Robert Henry Thurston (New York, 1929).
21. Robert H. Thurston, A Manual of the Steam Engine (New York,
1891), pp. vii-viii (cited in Channel!, “Engineering Science,” pp. 2 1-22.
22. Thurston, p. 281.
23. On Thurston’s role in the development of an ideology for engineers,
see Edwin T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt of the Engineers (Cleveland, 1971),
p. 55; on his view of science, see Robert H. Thurston, “The Mission of
Science,” Proceedings A.A.A.S. 33 (1884): 23 1-32.
24. Layton, pp. 142-43.
25. Ibid., p. 141.
694
Isherwood, Thurston, and
Taylor were all pioneers of what might be called “engineering science.” They were part of a broad movement, particularly
noteworthy in the 19th century, to recast engineering knowledge into a form
analogous to science. Among the results
o this tendency were the formation of professional societies similar to those
of science, the foundation of research journals, the creation of research
laboratories, and the adaptation of both the mathematical theory and the
experimental methods of science to the needs of engineering.
In anthropological terms,
we can say they were involved in a task akin to the diffusion of knowledge from
one culture (or subculture) to another. That
is, they transplanted science from its home its philosophy to technology. But the process resembled what anthropologists
call “stimulus diffusion” where instead of a direct imitation, the knowledge
that something can be done stimulates people in different culture to do it
also, but in their own distinctive way.
Engineering science often
differs from basic science in important particulars. Engineering sciences often drop the
fundamental ontology of natural philosophy, though on practical rather than
metaphysical grounds. Thus, in solid
mechanics, engineers deal with stresses in continuous media rather than a
microcosm of atoms and forces. Engineering
theory and experiment came to differ from those of physic because it was
concerned with man-made devices rather than directly with nature. Thus, engineering theory often deals with
idealization of machines, beams, heat engines, or similar devices. And the result of engineering science are
often statements about such devices rather than statements about nature. The experimental study of engineering involves
the use of models, testing machines, towing tanks, wind tunnels, and the like. But such experimental studies involve scale
effects. From Smeaton onward we find a
constant concern with comparing the results gained with models with the
performance of full-scale apparatus. By
its very nature, therefore, engineering science is less abstracted and
idealized; it is much closer to the “real” world of engineering. Thus, engineering science often differs from
basic science in both style and substance. Generalizations about “science” based on one
will not necessarily apply to the other. [26]
Though most engineers have
been willing to accept an identification as applied scientist, there has been
at least some dissent. There is, in
fact, a second engineering ideology, which defines the engineer’s role in terms
of design, which may or may not be consid-
26. Edwin T. Layton, Jr., “Mirror-Image Twins: The Communities of
Science and Technology in 19th-Century America,” Technology and Culture 12
(October 1971) 562-80.
695
ered a part of “science.” Indeed, most engineering publications and most
engineering practice are probably better understood in terms of design than
science.
An example of the
ideological use of “design” by engineers is provided by an address by William
McClellan to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1913. McClellan argued that engineering came from
the merger of two distinct traditions, the practical or mechanical on the one
hand and the theoretical or scientific on the other. In this typology, then, there were three types
of engineers: the applied scientist, the mechanic, and the designer. McClellan called the last the “real engineer.”
[27]
McClellan’s views represent a minority
view in engineering which has appeared and reappeared from time to time. But it rests on solid foundations; the
membership standards adopted for professional grades of membership by leading
engineering societies are based on the “ability to design.” “Design” has never displaced “scientist” or
“applied scientist” for several reasons. Obviously, much of the impetus to modern
engineering has, indeed, come from science. There are also ideological reasons for the use
of “science” by engineers. Engineers, at
least until very recently, were not concerned with maintaining a sharp distinction
between themselves and scientists. These
two groups were scarcely in competition. The struggles for professional identification
and loyalty have centered on drawing a distinction between engineers and
technicians or businessmen. Second,
science has traditionally been a high-status occupation, and American engineers
have been concerned, almost to the point of obsession, with the low prestige of
engineering; an identification as “scientist” was expected to raise status.
But while it might be convenient
ideologically for engineers to confuse science and engineering, this can become
a source of confusion for scholars attempting to understand science and
technology. And nowhere is this effect
more serious than on that part of engineering we have classed as “design.” From the point of view of modern science,
design is nothing, but from the point of view of engineering, design is
everything. It represents the purposive
adaption of means to reach a preconceived end, the very essence of engineering.
The scientific parts of engineering are
entirely auxiliary, since the end of technology is not knowledge. Only insofar as science serves design can it
be of use to the technologist. But
important changes may take place in design without any increment in what, by
the modern definition, we would call science.
27. William McClellan, “A Suggestion for the Engineering Profession,” Transactions
of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 32, pt. 2 (1913): 1271-72.
696
In order to illustrate the
difficulties of understanding design change, I have selected an example from
recent American engineering history, the development of the vertical lift
bridge by the engineers J. A. L. Waddell and John Lyle Harrington. This case is particularly instructive because
the basic principles had been long known. More than a half-century earlier, the
ingenious Squire Whipple had built a number of wooden vertical lift bridges
over the Erie Canal. They incorporated
the fundamental elements of Waddell’s and Harrington’s designs: a center span
which could be raised and lowered vertically by means of counterweighted cables
running over sheaves in towers at both ends. Waddell adapted this old idea to meet a newer
need: for relatively inexpensive low-level railroad bridges across navigable
waterways. His pioneering bridge, the
South Halsted Street bridge in Chicago, was built in 1893. It involved at least several changes: it was
much larger, much stronger, made of a new material (steel), and it had to be
operated by a steam engine. One could
(and should) credit Waddell with the insight to see this design as the solution
to a new problem; similarly, the more massive steel structure posed problems in
solid mechanics that Whipple had not faced. From the modern, scientific viewpoint one
might credit Waddell with an ingenious application of existing knowledge. [28]
This scientific perspective
would underestimate Waddell’s achievement, but it would miss Harrington’s
altogether. Harrington made no
fundamental changes at all, save perhaps the substitution of electricity for
steam as a prime mover, scarcely an addition to scientific knowledge. What he did was to redesign virtually every
component in Waddell’s bridge, drawing upon his mechanical engineering
background (Waddell was solely a civil engineer). Harrington made many changes, mostly
refinements, and none involving any significant new inputs of basic science. Yet, the difference was quite striking:
Harrington transformed Waddell’s clumsy design into a well-integrated, rational
design that beautifully balanced and adapted available means to the needs of
this type of bridge. Waddell’s bridge
was not a success, and no bridges of similar type were undertaken in America
for fourteen years, until after Harrington became Waddell’s partner. Not only were Harrington’s bridges successful,
but following his work, almost any competent bridge engineer could design a
vertical lift bridge. In short,
virtually all the science must be credited to Waddell, but Harrington’s design
contributions made the difference between success and failure. [29]
28. J. A. L. Waddell, “Vertical Lift Bridges,” in J. A. L. Waddell, Memoirs
and Addresses of Two Decades (Easton, Penn., 1928), pp. 695-729, 731-44.
29. Ernest E. Howard, “Vertical Lift Bridges,” Transactions of the
American Society of Civil [Engineers 95
(1921): 580-626, and “Discussion on Vertical Lilt Bridges,” ibid., p
627-95. For an insight into Harrington’s
style of design, see Horatio P. Van Cleve, “Mechanical Features of the Vertical
Lift Bridge,” Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 40(1918):
1017-35, and “Discussion,” ibid., pp. 1035-42.
Waddell never was willing to give Harrington credit for a major
improvement, and his claims (in the discussion above) helped sharpen the issue.]
HHC: [bracketed] displayed on page 698 of original.
697
It is instructive and
amusing to see Harrington, the designer, questioning the abstractions of
engineering science. Harrington’s design
for the Twelfth Street Viaduct in Kansas City was criticized by one L.J. Mensch
for its failure to exploit fully the engineering theory available. In his reply, Harrington used many of the same
arguments used by engineering scientists to attack basic science. Harrington criticized “the extremist who bases
his plans on the expectations of perfect materials and workmanship, and allows
nothing for imperfections of both.” He
further pointed out that purely theoretical calculations were often wasted since
“considerations of convenience and of uniformity of design do not permit of
sectioning exactly in accord with the calculated stresses.” He concluded that “mathematical analysis must
be supported by sound judgment.” [30]
Of course, design might
well be considered a science, and engineers sometimes so treat it, but it is
also clearly a matter of art as well. Indeed, it is the oldest part of engineering
knowledge to be recorded; the early engineering and machine books are in the
nature of portfolios of design, and there is a deep kinship between engineering
design and art, running back to the artist-engineers of the Renaissance and
earlier. The natural units of study of
engineering design resemble the iconographic themes of the art historian. It is no accident that some of the best work
on the history of engineering designs has been done by historians of art,
architecture, and building. Carl
Condit’s works provide outstanding examples.
But despite this kinship
with art, engineering design clearly displays many of the characteristics of
science. It is truly cumulative in the
sense that routine practitioners can do things that could not be done by men of
genius living in earlier centuries. It
can be reduced to systematic, written, and graphic form and taught at school. Stimulated by systems analysis, there has
been a rather vigorous attempt to reduce design to a mathematical science. This has been accompanied by attempts to
reestablish design as the central theme of engineering, an effort not without
ideological overtones. [31]
30. Discussion: Traffic Viaduct, Kansas City, Mo.,” Transactions of
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 80 (1916): 567-68.
31. The recent engineering interest in design is manifested in the
following: John R. M. Alger and Carl V. Hays, Creative Synthesis in Design (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J., 1964); Morris Asimow, Introduction to Design (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J., 1962); William Gosling, [The
Design of Engineering Systems (New York, 1962); Arthur D. Hall, A
Methodology for Systems Engineering (Princeton, N.J., 1962); and Thomas T.
Woodson, Introduction to Engineering Design (New York, 1966).]
HHC: [bracketed] displayed on page 699 of original.
698
But if design is to be
considered as another technological science, it clearly differs from both basic
science and engineering sciences. At
least in the more traditional textbooks, engineering design relies heavily on
graphical modes of communication. The
information is often rather detailed and shows some formal similarity to such
subjects as taxonomic botany. In short,
engineering design is concerned with real working systems, the complex
individual entities that are the end product of engineering activity. Engineering sciences, like solid mechanics or
kinematics, deal with idealized versions of these man-made devices. Similarly, physics represents a much greater
degree of abstraction.
Design, engineering
science, and basic science represent a hierarchy of progressive abstraction. They constitute a spectrum which connects the
world of engineering artifacts to the ideal world of theoretical physics. From this point of view, the issues involved
in the theories of science-technology relationships can be restated. The ideology expounded by scientists from
Joseph Henry to Vannevar Bush involves that old familiar philosophical idea,
reductionism. The scientific theory of
technology is simply one part of that program, beloved of particle physicists,
to reduce all the sciences to laws of the science allegedly most fundamental. In an age that believed in determinism, this
program made sense. Indeed, it inspired
much useful work, not merely in bringing advanced physics to engineering but in
the parallel attempts to reduce biology to chemistry and physics. But since Heisenberg’s discovery of the uncertainty
principle, the reductionist program has been discredited. In his Physics and Philosophy, Heisenberg
argued that the separate sciences are not reducible to each other, but that
they are linked by a sort of symmetric overlapping at the boundaries between
one science and another., [32] Using
32. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in
Modern Science (New York, 1958), pp. 93-109. Heisenberg is not considering the relations of
basic science and engineering, but rather the relations among the basic
sciences. But much of his argument will
apply to the former problem, e.g., “The applications of the concepts of
classical physics, e.g., in chemistry, had been a mistake. Therefore, one will nowadays be less inclined
to assume that the concepts of physics, even those of quantum theory, can
certainly be applied everywhere in biology or other sciences. We will, on the contrary, try to keep the
doors open for the entrance of new concepts even in those parts of science
where the older concepts have been very useful for the understanding of the
phenomena” (p. 199). One might also note
his statement that “the scientific concepts are idealizations... But through
this process of idealization and precise definition the immediate connection
with reality is lost. The concepts still
correspond very closely to [reality in that part of nature which had been the
object of the research. But the
correspondence may be lost in other parts containing other groups of
phenomena.” (p. 200)]
HHC: [bracketed] displayed on page 699 of original.
699
analogous arguments one might conclude that
engineering sciences are autonomous, however closely linked to basic science.
The ideologies of science
and technology thus provide three quite different views of their interaction. Each has its own built-in limitations, but
each refers to important social and intellectual realities. For a complete picture, the insights of all
three will have to be incorporated in our historiography. As a first step we might broaden our
conception of “science” in order to include technological realities which the
conventional theory does not take into account.
700
The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
April 2003