The Science-Technology Relationship as a Historiographic Problem

Abstract

In today's industrial civilization, words and refer to two complexes of activities, persons, institutions, and values, and they are heavily charged with sentiment. Since they often appear side by side, it is natural to ask about their relationship or, rather, about relationship of various phenomena that are labeled by them. This relationship has eluded all who have tried to grasp it, and we may simply speak of the problem of sciencetechnology relationship. A striking aspect of problem is number and diversity of those interested in it. Among them are philosophers, sociologists, and historians, whose interest in question is essentially theoretical; scientists and engineers, who have a personal stake in interpretation of relationship; makers of public policy, whose decisions are based, at least in part, upon specific theories of relationship; and, finally, general public, whose lives are affected by such decisions. All of these groups have participated in debate, defending their own viewpoints, pursuing their own self-interests, contributing a spectacular variety of methods and terminologies, and thus generating a vast and bewildering literature. Instead of accepting benefits of a division of labor and exchanging results across disciplinary boundaries, participants in debate have inclined toward a do-it-yourself mentality. Philosophers and social scientists do double duty as historians; historians do their own philosophizing; practitioners of science and technology as well as makers of public policy rarely take advantage of results of specialists that could have been directly useful to them. As a consequence, quality of such efforts has been unimpressive, and much of literature makes painful reading. Although debate has gone on for many decades, no method has emerged with which to solve problem systematically. Much less is a solution or even an end to debate anywhere in sight.

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